During the brief signing ceremony, Ghani and Abdullah remained silent.
Chauncey drafted an amicus brief — signed by ten other historians, including Cott — for the 2003 Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas, which overturned the last remaining laws criminalizing sodomy.
BOCA RATON, Fla .— Forward Alexander Radulov, whose departure from the Nashville Predators to Russia in 2008 touched off a brief signing war between the N.H.L. and the Kontinental Hockey League, is close to returning to Nashville.
The political views of Xi Jinping, China's vice president and Mr. Hu's anointed successor, are unknown, though he has flashed brief signs in a few speeches and meetings of what sound to analysts like more progressive leanings.
He said a brief signed by Fortune 500 companies supporting affirmative action in a 2003 Supreme Court case may have influenced Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who supported race-based affirmative action after having consistently opposed it before then.
The administration's brief, signed by Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, responds to briefs filed in late August on behalf of the two groups of detainees who are seeking a full judicial review of their designation as enemy combatants.
"It ignores available race-neutral alternatives and amounts to a forbidden racial quota," the brief signed by Theodore B. Olson, the solicitor general, said of the undergraduate admissions program.
But "President Bush has expressed support for such legislation," said the first paragraph of a 26-page brief, signed by Robert D. McCallum, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's civil division.
An amicus brief, signed by Steven Bochco, David Milch, Norman Lear, Diane English, and a hundred and twenty-seven other writers, argued that "the process creators go through to capture the necessary magic is inexact, counterintuitive, nonlinear, often painful and above all, delicate".
"We were pleased that the court recognized the effort," said David DeBruin, a partner at the law firm of Jenner & Block in Washington, which helped draft a brief signed by 65 large companies, including household names like 3M, Coca-Cola and Microsoft.
