But two recent critiques of his opinion in the landmark decision guaranteeing people the right keep guns at home for self-defense are notable because they come from respected fellow conservative federal judges.

The judges, J. Harvie Wilkinson of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., and Richard Posner of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, take Scalia to task for engaging in the same sort of judicial activism he regularly disdains.

Wilkinson was interviewed by President Bush in 2005 for a Supreme Court vacancy. His article strongly suggests that the 5-4 decision in Heller v. District of Columbia would have come out differently if he had been chosen for the court. Bush's appointees to the high court, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, joined Scalia's opinion.

The district's elected government is trying to figure out how to maintain restrictions on gun possession in the wake of the court ruling that struck down its 32-year-old ban on handguns. The D.C. council voted this month to let residents own most semiautomatic pistols and eliminate a requirement that guns be stored unloaded or secured with trigger locks.

Congressional critics said the city did not go far enough. The House passed a bill, backed by the National Rifle Association, that broadens the rights of city residents to buy and own firearms. The Senate has yet to act.

Wilkinson said elected officials are in a better position to determine gun laws than the courts. He compared the gun case to Roe v. Wade, the abortion rights decision that conservatives consider among the court's worst.

"Heller represents a triumph for conservative lawyers. But it also represents a failure — the Court's failure to adhere to a conservative judicial methodology in reaching its decision," Wilkinson wrote in an article to be published next year in the Virginia Law Review. "In fact, Heller encourages Americans to do what conservative jurists warned for years they should not do: bypass the ballot and seek to press their political agenda in the courts."

The guns case was easily the most significant opinion Scalia has written in his 22 years on the court. Yet Wilkinson faults the justice for falling victim to the same criticism Scalia leveled in a scathing dissent in the court's 1992 decision that reaffirmed the right to an abortion.

The full 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments Thursday as judges review a decision overturning Joe Nacchio's April 2007 conviction.

Prosecutors argued he sold $52 million worth of stock when he knew Denver-based Qwest Communications International Inc. was at risk while other investors did not.

In March, a three-judge panel of the appeals court ruled that the trial judge improperly barred testimony from a defense witness. Prosecutors sought a review by the full appeals court, which granted the request.

Still pending is a civil lawsuit the Securities and Exchange Commission filed against former Qwest executives, including Nacchio.

The 4-1 decision dated Wednesday and released Thursday upholds a lower court ruling that sided with Jennifer Henn and her former employer, the Times-Tribune of Scranton.

Two former Lackawanna County commissioners sued Henn and the paper over a January 2004 story that said they were not cooperative in their appearances before the grand jury.

The Supreme Court said reporters cannot be forced to identify confidential sources — a protection granted by the state's Shield Law.

Grand jury proceedings are secret and state law bars prosecutors, court officials or jurors from discussing such investigations. Witnesses are not barred from discussing their testimony outside the courtroom.

Lackawanna County Judge Robert A. Mazzoni had ruled that the importance of grand jury secrecy outweighed the protections of the Shield Law, but a three-judge Superior Court panel determined that Mazzoni had carved out an improper exception to the law. The high court agreed with the panel.

A Harrison County jury awarded the damages to residents last year, after finding the chemical giant downplayed and lied about health threats at a former zinc smelting plant in Spelter.

The high court accepted DuPont's appeal of the verdicts, and of the circuit judge's order holding it liable for the conduct of the site's previous owner.

They've been combined with an appeal from the plaintiffs, who want more people compensated for private property cleanups.

The consolidated argument hearing has not been set.

Justice Robin Davis voted to refuse each of the appeals.

Gov. Joe Manchin had urged the justices to accept the case, citing its $196 million punitive damage award.

The full 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments Thursday as judges review a decision overturning Joe Nacchio's April 2007 conviction.

Prosecutors argued he sold $52 million worth of stock when he knew Denver-based Qwest Communications International Inc. was at risk while other investors did not.

In March, a three-judge panel of the appeals court ruled that the trial judge improperly barred testimony from a defense witness. Prosecutors sought a review by the full appeals court, which granted the request.

Still pending is a civil lawsuit the Securities and Exchange Commission filed against former Qwest executives, including Nacchio.

Democratic U.S. Rep. William Jefferson's attorney told a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that a congressional aide's testimony about Jefferson's leadership in passing trade legislation benefiting African nations violated the Constitution's speech or debate clause.

The clause says congressmen "shall not be questioned in any other Place" for speech or debate associated with their legislative actions. A federal judge in February refused to dismiss the indictment. Jefferson, who faces up to 235 years in prison if convicted of bribery and other charges, appealed.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Lytle told the appeals court judges that U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III got it right when he ruled that Jefferson's lawyers sought to apply the clause so broadly that it would make it virtually impossible to ever charge a congressman with a crime.

Jefferson's attorney, Robert P. Trout, contended the testimony about how the congressman gained influence with African leaders was at the heart of the government's case. Trout said one of the ways Jefferson gained that influence, according to grand jury testimony, was through leadership on the trade legislation.

The appeals court judges vigorously questioned Lytle and Trout for about 50 minutes, focusing on whether the indictment was tainted if prosecutors neither sought nor relied on the testimony cited by Jefferson.

Lytle said the aide volunteered the information in question, which amounted to just four lines in a massive set of grand jury transcripts.