A federal appeals court ruled Friday that witnesses should have full viewing access to Idaho's upcoming execution, siding with The Associated Press and 16 other news organizations.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the decision a day after hearing arguments in a lawsuit from the news groups seeking to change Idaho's protocol, saying it's unconstitutionally restrictive.

The case aims to strike down a portion of Idaho's regulations that prevent witnesses — including reporters acting as representatives of the public — from watching executions until after catheters have been inserted into the veins of death row inmates.

The lawsuit comes as lethal injections have drawn greater scrutiny, from whether the drugs are effective to whether the execution personnel are properly trained.

It's unclear how the ruling will affect the scheduled execution next week of Idaho death row inmate Richard Leavitt, who will be put to death by lethal injection. Leavitt was convicted of the 1984 murder of a Blackfoot woman.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback has signed a law aimed at keeping the state's courts or government agencies from basing decisions on Islamic or other foreign legal codes, and a national Muslim group's spokesman said Friday that a court challenge is likely.

The new law, taking effect July 1, doesn't specifically mention Shariah law, which broadly refers to codes within the Islamic legal system. Instead, it says courts, administrative agencies or state tribunals can't base rulings on any foreign law or legal system that would not grant the parties the same rights guaranteed by state and U.S. constitutions.

"This bill should provide protection for Kansas citizens from the application of foreign laws," said Stephen Gele, spokesman for the American Public Policy Alliance, a Michigan group promoting model legislation similar to the new Kansas law. "The bill does not read, in any way, to be discriminatory against any religion."

But supporters have worried specifically about Shariah law being applied in Kansas court cases, and the alliance says on its website that it wants to protect Americans' freedoms from "infiltration" by foreign laws and legal doctrines, "especially Islamic Shariah Law."

The Supreme Court will decide whether to apply retroactively its 2010 decision that immigrants have a right to be told that a guilty plea could lead to their deportation.

The high court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal from Roselva Chaidez, who was in the process of being deported when the court made that March 2010 decision.

Chaidez pleaded guilty to fraud in 2004 after falsely claiming to be a passenger in a car wreck. Authorities started deportation procedures while she was applying for U.S. citizenship in 2007.

Her lawyer never told her that her fraud conviction may lead to her deportation. Chaidez says she should be able to take advantage of the Supreme Court decision that cemented that principle.

A seemingly divided Supreme Court on Monday weighed a potentially costly challenge to the pharmaceutical industry's practice of not paying overtime to its sales representatives.

The justices questioned whether the federal law governing overtime pay should apply to the roughly 90,000 people who try to persuade doctors to prescribe certain drugs to their patients.

Many sales jobs are exempt from overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act. But unlike typical salespeople who often work on commission, pharmaceutical sales representatives cannot seal a deal with doctors. Federal law, in fact, forbids any binding agreement by a doctor to prescribe a specific drug.

Two salesmen who once worked for drug maker GlaxoSmithKline filed a class-action lawsuit claiming that they were not paid for the 10 to 20 hours they worked each week on average outside the normal business day. Their jobs required them to meet with doctors in their offices, but also to attend conventions, dinners, even golf outings.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was among several justices who wondered about limits on overtime opportunities if the court were to rule for the sales reps. A court filing by the industry said drug companies could be on the hook for billions of dollars in past overtime.

Plea bargain negotiations between criminals and prosecutors will now come under constitutional scrutiny because a divided Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that convictions can be overturned if defense lawyers don't adequately assist clients in deciding whether to accept such offers.

The court's decision could affect nearly every criminal case in the United States, where more than 9 in 10 convictions come by guilty pleas.

In a rare move justices use to underscore their objections, Justice Antonin Scalia read his dissent aloud from the bench. He said the court's decision "upends decades of our cases ... and opens a whole new boutique of constitutional jurisprudence" — plea bargaining law — even though there is no legal right to be offered a plea bargain.

"In the United States, we have plea bargaining a plenty, but until today, it has been regarded as a necessary evil," said Scalia, who was on the losing side of two 5-4 decisions on the issue. "...Today, however, the Supreme Court elevates plea bargaining from a necessary evil to a constitutional entitlement. It is no longer a somewhat embarrassing adjunct to our criminal justice system; rather as the court announces ... 'it is the criminal justice system.'"

The two majority opinions, both written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, have potentially broad impact because 97 percent of federal convictions and 94 percent of state convictions in 2009 were obtained by a guilty plea, according to the Justice Department.

The rulings crafted by Kennedy mean that criminal defense lawyers are now required to inform their clients of plea bargain offers, regardless of whether they think the client should accept them, and must give their clients good advice on whether to accept a plea bargain at all stages of prosecution. If they don't, Kennedy said, they will run afoul of the Sixth Amendment guarantee that criminal defendants have a right to assistance of counsel.

The Supreme Court indicated Monday that it could throw out an $18 million penalty against a natural gas company convicted of an environmental violation in Rhode Island.

In arguments at the high court, several justices sounded skeptical of the government's case for upholding the penalty against Texas-based Southern Union Co. over its improper storage of mercury in a building in Pawtucket.

The arguments focused on whether a line of Supreme Court cases limiting judges' discretion to increase prison sentences also should apply to criminal fines, as Southern Union says.

The Obama administration says judges have much more discretion to hand out fines.

Unlike other Supreme Court disputes involving corporations, this case does not appear to divide the justices along ideological lines. In the sentencing cases, conservative Justice Antonin Scalia has been the most forceful advocate for reining in judges and requiring juries to find any facts that could lead to a longer sentence.

Scalia said he sees the Southern Union case as a logical extension of the court's earlier rulings. He said it would be odd to require a jury to establish facts that lead to even the shortest jail term, yet give judges freedom to decide on fines that "will make a pauper of you."