The Supreme Court's recent rulings upholding Indiana's voter ID law and Kentucky's use of lethal injections reflect a subtle but profoundly important shift in how the justices decide constitutional questions. In the past, the court was willing to strike down laws before they went into effect out of concern that the rights of some people might be violated. For example, the justices used that approach to void laws that regulated abortion or restricted pornography on the Internet.

But since Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the court three years ago, that approach has been cast aside. Broad and sweeping attacks on state laws have met with defeat.

Instead, Roberts and his colleagues have been sending a new, sterner message to legal advocates: Produce evidence that a law has actually violated someone's rights, and name names if you can. Only then might the court rule that a law is unconstitutional for those in the same situation.

The high court's newfound skepticism toward broad legal challenges was on display Monday when the justices, in a 6-3 decision, upheld Indiana's law requiring voters to show photo identification at their polling places.

As with recent rulings rejecting broad challenges to laws on "partial-birth" abortions and lethal injections to carry out the death penalty, the court ruled that the plaintiffs had failed to prove their cases. In Indiana, for example, the challengers did not point to a single voter who had been deterred or discouraged from casting a ballot because of the need to obtain a photo identification from the state.

Roberts assigned Justice John Paul Stevens, often the court's strongest liberal voice, to write the lead opinion upholding the law. With a tone of frustration, Stevens said the challengers had "advanced a broad attack on the constitutionality" of the measure by the Indiana Legislature, but failed to muster any hard evidence.

A lawsuit might have focused on elderly and disabled people who do not drive, or those who live in nursing homes. But they are entitled to vote by mail, and therefore do not need the photo ID.

"On the basis of the record that has been made in this litigation, we cannot conclude that the [Indiana] statute imposes excessively burdensome requirements on any class of voters," Stevens wrote.

Immigrants seeking legal status in the United States are being victimized with disturbing frequency by lousy lawyers, a federal appeals panel said Wednesday.

After criticizing the work done and not done by defense lawyers, the three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan took aim at the government, scolding its lawyers for quibbling over irrelevant language in one case in a quest to win.

Victimized by the failures of lawyers on both sides are the immigrants, "a vulnerable population who come to this country searching for a better life and often arrive unfamiliar with our language and culture, in economic deprivation and in fear," the court wrote.

"In immigration matters, so much is at stake — the right to remain in this country, to reunite a family or to work," the court said.

Essentially saying in legal jargon that it was fed up, the appeals court ordered the case of a Jamaican immigrant, Garfield Livern St. Valentine Aris, reopened.

Aris, who entered the United States at age 12 in 1983, was a lawful immigrant who supported his wife and stepdaughter and had no close family members in Jamaica, the court said.

He pleaded guilty in August 1991 to a cocaine possession charge and was sentenced to three years' probation and fined $1,000. Afterward, federal authorities ordered deportation proceedings to begin because of his conviction.

The appeals court said Aris' lawyers "failed spectacularly" once he was victimized by a simple error: A paralegal told him it appeared his hearing was not scheduled on the day that it was. When he didn't show up, he was ordered deported on May 3, 1995.

The appeals court said that the law firm never told him the hearing had occurred and that he had been ordered deported. In June 2005, he learned there was a deportation order against him. When he hired new lawyers, they filed flawed documents on his behalf, the appeals court said.

As a result, he was detained for nine months, and, without his income, his wife and stepdaughter could not afford to pay rent and were forced to move to a homeless shelter.

The appeals panel said in a footnote that it seemed Aris had a compelling argument to remain in the United States because of "social and humane considerations," including the relatively minor nature of his drug offense and because his family is in the country.

The appeals court said it was troubled that, during arguments before it, a government lawyer failed to recognize that it did not matter whether the paralegal who misinformed Aris told him "you do not have a hearing" or "our records indicate that you do not have a hearing scheduled."

The court noted that Aris, who has not been deported, was an immigrant with limited familiarity with U.S. immigration law.

"When lawyers representing immigrants fail to live up to their professional obligations, it is all too often the immigrants they represent who suffer the consequences," the appeals court wrote.

"We appreciate that, unfortunately, calendar mishaps will from time to time occur. But the failure to communicate such mistakes, once discovered, to the client and to take all necessary steps to correct them is more than regrettable — it is unacceptable. It is nondisclosure that turns the ineffective assistance of a mere scheduling error into more serious malpractice."

The court noted the role of government, as well. "Governmental authorities, whatever their roles, must be attentive to such lapses that so grievously undermine the administration of justice," the appeals panel said.

With Republicans complaining it was watered down and Democrats contending it was strengthened, the "three-strikes" illegal-immigration bill advanced out of an Indiana House committee today.

The House Public Policy Committee made numerous changes to the bill, Senate Bill 335, from the version that passed last month in the state Senate.

Among other things, employers still could face the loss of their business license to operate in Indiana if they are found guilty of employing illegal aliens three times. The difference is, the amended bill shortens the violation period from three times in 10 years to three times in five.

Also, instead of violations being investigated and prosecuted by all 92 county prosecutors in local courts, illegal-alien-hiring cases instead would by heard by an administrative law judge at the state Department of Labor.

If an employer's business license is revoked, it could appeal to the governor, under the new wording to the bill.

The biggest criticism of House Republicans on the committee was that the bill no longer mandates that the superintendent of the Indiana State Police negotiate an agreement with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, to provide training to state troopers on enforcing federal immigration laws. The bill allows the State Police to pursue such an agreement, but does not require it.

State Rep. Trent Van Haaften, D-Mount Vernon, chaired the committee and contended the changes were necessary to close loopholes in the original Senate bill.

The original bill had no funding included. The amended version seeks $1 million for the State Police and $500,000 for the state attorney general's office for immigration enforcement. That appropriation request means the bill goes next to the House Ways and Means Committee, which controls the budget purse strings.

If it passes there, the bill then would go to the full Indiana House, and from there, back to the state Senate.

Read Tuesday's Courier & Press and courierpress.com for more on today's legislative action and Web extras.

A 30-year-old man pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges that he married a woman from Russia so she could obtain U.S. immigration status and remain in the country.

Benjamin Claude Adams of Los Angeles pleaded guilty to two federal felony charges of marriage fraud and making a false statement.

There was no plea agreement, U.S. attorney spokesman Thom Mrozek said.

Adams faces up to five years in federal prison for each count at his April 7 sentencing, Mrozek said.

Adams' attorney, Deputy Federal Public Defender Kimberly Savo, did not immediately respond to a phone message Wednesday seeking comment.

Prosecutors said Adams, a U.S national, met 25-year-old Yuliya Mikhailovna Kalinina in January 2006 after responding to an online ad on Craigslist offering prospective husbands up to $15,000 to marry her.

The advertisement reportedly cast the arrangement as a "Green Card Marriage."

Adams and Kalinina, who was living in Marina del Rey, wed the next month in a ceremony performed by Kalinina's live-in boyfriend, Dmitri Chavkerov, an ordained minister of a Web-based church, prosecutors said.

Adams and Kalinina were arrested on Nov. 29 at their homes by U.S. immigration agents.

Kalinina pleaded not guilty to marriage fraud charges on Dec. 17 and is scheduled for trial on Feb. 5.

Her attorney, Dale Rubin, has previously said she didn't know it was illegal to marry for a green card, which he said was evidenced by the blatant language in her ad.

Adams and Kalinina are both free on bond, Mrozek said.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by immigrants arrested in a factory raid, saying their constitutional rights were not violated — though it noted that government bungling allowed children of some detainees to go unsupervised. The March raid at leather goods manufacturer Michael Bianco Inc. led to the arrest of 361 of its 500 employees, mostly Central American women, on federal immigration charges.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a federal judge who ruled that the district court has no jurisdiction over the case. The appellate court added, however, that "our opinion should not be read as an unqualified endorsement of the way in which immigration officials handled the matter."

The court rejected the immigrants' claim that their detention and quick transfer to holding centers in Texas interfered with their right to make decisions on the care and control of their children.

The judges said in their ruling, however, that they accepted allegations U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials "gave social welfare agencies insufficient notice of the raid, that caseworkers were denied access to detainees until after the first group had been transferred, and that various ICE actions temporarily thwarted any effective investigation into the detainees' needs."

As a result, a substantial number of the detainees' minor children were left for varying periods of time without adult supervision, according to the ruling.

State officials were among those critical of how ICE officials conducted the raid. An agency spokesman has said that ICE notified social workers about the raids ahead of time, and that no children were stranded.

ICE spokeswoman Paula Grenier said agency officials will comment only after a thorough review of Tuesday's ruling.

An attorney for the plaintiffs, Harvey Kaplan, said that he was studying the ruling with colleagues and that they may appeal or go back to the district court and amend their complaint.

"Those are the options, but we haven't analyzed the best way to proceed," Kaplan said.

Attorneys had argued that the government intentionally deprived the immigrants of family and legal resources by transferring them to remote holding centers in Texas, in some cases hours after the raid.

ICE lawyers have said that the New Bedford workers were moved because there was no space to hold them in Massachusetts, and that no detainees were denied counsel.

Clergy, immigrants and immigrant advocates say most undocumented immigrants are taking a wait-and-see attitude on Arizona's upcoming employer-sanctions law. Others say the state's move to crack down on undocumented workers has led some of them to leave Arizona for other states or to go back to Mexico. When it takes effect, the law will require all employers to verify the employment eligibility of new hires using a federal database.

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to decide whether voter identification laws unfairly deter the poor and minorities from voting, stepping into a contentious partisan issue in advance of the 2008 elections. The justices will hear arguments early next year in a challenge to an Indiana law that requires voters to present photo ID before casting their ballots. The state has defended the law as a way to combat voter fraud. The state Democratic party and civil rights groups complained that the law unfairly targets poor and minority voters, without any evidence that in-person voter fraud exists in Indiana. The party argued that those voters tend to be Democrats.

Courts have upheld voter ID laws in Arizona and Michigan, but struck down Missouri's. Earlier this month, a federal judge dismissed a challenge to Georgia's voter identification law, saying the statute does not impose a significant burden on the right to vote.

Election law experts had urged the court to take the Indiana case to instruct courts on how to weigh claims of voter fraud versus those of disenfranchisement. "The court better resolve this question before ballots start getting counted next fall," said Stanford University law professor Pamela Karlan.

The court is expected to issue a decision by late June, in time for the November general election.

The Indiana law enacted in 2005 was upheld by a federal judge and by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. Before the law's passage, an Indiana voter had only to sign a poll book at the polling place, where a photo copy of the voter's signature was kept on file for comparison.

"The purpose of the Indiana law is to reduce voting fraud, and voting fraud impairs the right of legitimate voters to vote by diluting their votes," Judge Richard Posner said in his majority opinion.

But in a dissent, Judge Terence Evans said, "Let's not beat around the bush. The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too-thinly veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by folks believed to skew Democratic."

Bill Groth, an attorney who has represented the Indiana Democratic Party in the lawsuit, said he was thrilled that the nation's highest court will take up the case. He said the appeals court made light of the right to vote in its decision, but the Supreme Court has guarded that right more seriously.

"The court has over and over stressed that the right to vote should be protected, and any state law that burdens that right should be carefully and meticulously reviewed," Groth said.

The voter ID challenge was among 17 new cases accepted by the court in advance of the start of its new term on Monday.