State lawmakers and governors past and present squared off at the Supreme Court yesterday over who’s empowered to make commission appointments – particularly, in this instance, to the recently created Coal Ash Commission, Oil & Gas Commission and Mining Commission. The dispute between the branches of government came to a head last fall after legislators created the commissions and authorized the House speaker and Senate president to appoint most of the members on each.

The federal courts in eastern North Carolina have been operating under a state of judicial emergency for years now, though you wouldn’t know it given the lack of a sense of urgency exhibited by the state’s United States senators. Down a judge since December 2005, the courts in this largely rural part of the state have managed one of the heavier district caseloads in the country — relying in large part on help from three senior judges: James C. Fox, age 86; W. Earl Britt, age 83; and Malcolm Howard, age 75.

Michael Hendrix had a contract to sell eight of his 24 acres of land at Old Hollow and Germanton Roads in Winston-Salem for morethan a million dollars in early 1998. But because the state Department of Transportation had identified that land as lying in the path of a proposed beltway project running east to west just north of the city, the deal died.

Can a state bar a judge from personally soliciting campaign contributions from individuals and organizations? Or does such a ban violate the First Amendment by impinging on the judge’s freedom of speech?

By all accounts, the 2014 North Carolina Supreme Court race, with four of seven seats up for grabs, is destined for the record books. Already spending in the race is nearing $4 million, with a little under a month to go before votes are counted. And with public financing dollars gone, the candidates are on their own in the escalating hunt for funds.

All white and overwhelmingly male- Latest departure leaves NC federal courts among least diverse in the nation. It’s been more than 3,000 days since U.S. District Judge Malcolm Howard announced that he would be stepping down from his position on the federal court in eastern North Carolina. At roughly the same time, the then-freshman senator from North Carolina, Richard Burr, stood lecturing his colleagues on the senate floor about their blocking of votes for nominees to the federal bench.

Tucked away near the end of the 250-page Senate budget, in between the section slashing funds for legal services and the section forecasting cuts to state cultural resources, lies a proposal which would change the rules of the game in which state lawmakers now find themselves deeply entrenched: defending their laws from constitutional challenges. From voting rights to school vouchers to issues of local rule, the members of the General Assembly are fending off claims in at least a dozen lawsuits that laws enacted during the long session violate state and federal constitutions.

Steven Pruner learned the hard way that in North Carolina, selling a hot dog can get you jail time. Imagine his surprise when, in 2011, the vendor was charged and later convicted for operating his cart without a license near Duke University Medical Center – an offense which got him 45 days in the custody of the Durham County sheriff (a sentence later suspended to probation). Steve Cooksey almost suffered a similar fate when, after fighting his own diabetes and sharing insights into his recovery on his blog, he learned that his advice to readers constituted the unlicensed practice of dietetics, a misdemeanor offense under catchall provisions of the administrative code.

It started with a flickering brake light on Nicholas Heien’s Ford Escort. He was asleep in the back seat while Maynor Javier Vasquez drove the car along Interstate 77 in Surry County during the early morning hours in April 2009, when Officer Matt Darisse of the Surry County Sheriff’s Department flipped on his blue lights to stop the car. The officer told Vasquez he had pulled the Escort over for a non-functioning brake light.