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With Senate confirmation hearings scheduled to start next week , Bush administration officials and conservative allies working to win Alito 's approval say he fits within the judicial mainstream ; some Democrats and liberal advocacy groups trying to defeat his nomination say he is an ideologue.Neither characterization is completely accurate.Instead , the analysis , along with interviews of scholars who study the courts , shows that Alito takes consistently restrictive stances on some social issues and criminals ' rights but does not differ substantially from the typical judge in other areas.Overall , the analysis shows , Alito does not disagree with majority opinions more frequently than most federal appeals judges do in similar cases . Just as the justices scrutinized Virginia 's system for carrying out the death penalty several years ago , they are examining four cases from Texas this year , including the three heard yesterday.The number of capital cases is not unusual for the court , those who follow the issue say . The phenomenon is called " stereotype threat " - - a kind of performance anxiety discovered in 1995 when psychologists found that black students at Stanford University did significantly worse on intelligence tests if they were first asked to identify their race on the test form.Since then , dozens of other experiments have confirmed that subtly cuing women or minorities to think subconsciously about their sex or race causes them do poorly in areas where the stereotype suggests they are weak . His active questioning of lawyers representing the school boards , who have been sued by white parents whose children were denied their first choice of schools , was the most closely watched.He noted that even the Bush administration , which intervened on behalf of the white parents , said in its brief that " school districts have an unquestioned interest in reducing minority isolation , " but it added that only if it were achieved by " race-neutral means . It did not permit any other exception , however , based on its finding that none could be medically justified.If the court wants to uphold the federal law without overruling a precedent that is only six years old , it could say that it is bound by Congress 's factual findings , which distinguish the federal law from the Nebraska one.That is the course urged by the Bush administration in its brief , which speaks of " the long-standing principle that Congress is better equipped than courts to make factual findings that inform the constitutionality of federal statutes . Matthew Musladin was convicted and sentenced to at least 32 years in prison ; he says the buttons may have swayed the jury 's emotions , depriving him of his constitutional right to a fair trial . It overturned a $ 4 million punitive-damage award to an Alabama man who had sued a BMW dealer for selling him a repainted car instead of a new one.For the first time , the court declared that the constitutional right to due process of law meant that companies may not be subject to disproportionate punitive damages.In 2003 , the court broadly defined what qualifies as an excessive award , suggesting that punitive damages should normally be no more than nine times as large as compensatory damages . It argues that the Federal Circuit 's recent rulings , including its decision against MedImmune , reversed years of precedent that favored what some call the " pay and sue " strategy.The case has potentially wide implications for other technology firms , since it will affect the ability of patent holders to deflect challenges to their monopolies over inventions.MedImmune is supported in the case by the Generic Pharmaceutical Association and by the Bush administration - - which told the court in its brief that " there is a strong federal policy . KHARTOUM , Sudan - - The Sudanese can do a better job prosecuting crimes in Darfur than anyone else , Sudan 's justice minister said Wednesday , asserting international courts have no valid reason to investigate suspects in the vast area of western Sudan.Justice Minister Mohammed Ali al-Mardi spoke as a team from the International Criminal Court was in Khartoum to look into what the United Nations and others describe as war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur . The Bush administration urged the Supreme Court to declare that legal immigrants can be deported for drug offenses that are felonies in some states but only misdemeanors under federal law , as the court heard its first oral arguments of the new term yesterday.At issue are provisions of the 1996 immigration law that require any noncitizen guilty of an " aggravated felony " to be sent back to his country of origin , with no chance to ask for leniency . " Your argument , " he told Priscilla Smith , a lawyer for doctors challenging the law , " is that there is always a constitutional right to use what the physician thinks is the safest procedure .