North Carolina Court of Appeals Judge Barbara Jackson said today that she will run for the state Supreme Court seat held by Justice Edward Thomas Brady.

Jackson and Brady are both Republicans. Brady has not yet announced whether he will run for re-election, but Jackson's announcement suggests he won't. It would be highly unusual for a sitting Court of Appeals judge to challenge a justice from her own party.

Court of Appeals Judge Bob Hunter, a Democrat, has said he plans to run for the seat, as well.

Judicial races are technically nonpartisan in North Carolina. The candidate's political party does not appear on the ballot.

Jackson was first elected to the appeals court in 2004. She previously served as general counsel for the Department of Labor and as associate general counsel for former Gov. Jim Martin, a Republican. She also clerked for then-Associate Justice Burley Mitchell, a Democrat, on the N.C. Supreme Court.

Advocates and lawyers were trying to understand the impact of a state Superme Court decision, which found that a Garner man, who was convicted of a long-ago felony, had a right to own a gun.

The opinion applied only to Barney Britt, who was convicted of a drug crime in 1979, and it didn't have an immediate effect on the thousands of other felons in the state.

Criminal defense lawyers who practice in federal courts said they don't know what effect, if any, the opinion will have on federal rules, which prevent felons from buying and owning weapons except when a state has restored that right.

The ruling authored by Justice Edward Thomas Brady held that Britt should be able to own guns and that the state unfairly took away his right to own a firearm with a 2004 law that barred felons from owning firearms. Britt was convicted in 1979 of selling Quaalude pills, but he didn't have any further tangles with the law.

Though the opinion focused just on Britt's case, both sides of the gun control issue saw the ruling as significant because the state's highest court found that Britt had a right to bear arms that trumped the state's ability to restrict him from owning any weapons. (N&O)

* The 16-campus UNC system expects to eliminate about 900 administrative positions this year, an acknowledgement by university leaders of job growth gone wild.

Those 900 positions and other administrative costs could account for 75 percent or more of cuts that public university campuses will be asked to make this year as the system pares $171 million from its budget, UNC system officials say.

In cutting so heavily into administrative costs, UNC system President Erskine Bowles and others say they hope to protect academics. (N&O)

* All the clamor over health-care reform doesn't seem to bother freshman U.S. Rep. Larry Kissell.

"I remind people I taught high school," he said last week. "Loud and unruly people we call the fourth period."

But the Montgomery County Democrat is toeing a careful line on health care, balancing his own caution against the interests of his party and district just as he has on other issues during his first eight months in office. (Char-O)

The N.C. Supreme Court has ruled that doctors can be present at executions.

In a 4-3 decision authored by Justice Edward Thomas Brady, the court found that the N.C. Medical Board could not prohibit physicians from participating in the state's capital punishment procedures.

A state statute, "by its plain language, envisions physician participation in executions in some professional capacity," Brady wrote.

The medical board, a professional group that sets ethics rules for doctors, had barred doctors from monitoring inmates who were being put to death. In a lawsuit, the state Department of Correction argued that state law requiring doctors trumped the board's decision.

A Wake County Superior Court judge sided with the state in 2007, but executions remained in limbo while the case was being resolved. In today's ruling, the majority of the state Supreme Court affirmed the lower court's ruling.

In a dissent, Justices Robin Hudson and Patricia Timmons-Goodson and Chief Justice Sarah Parker argued the court should have let the legislature decide the issue.

The N.C. Supreme Court dove into the two-year stalemate in executions today by asking attorneys representing the state Department of Correction and the N.C. Medical Board to define what the state legislature meant in requiring that a doctor be present.

The debate over that word has created a de facto moratorium on executions in North Carolina. The correction department executes inmates on death row and is seeking to have a doctor take part in order to make sure the lethal injection is properly administered, Dan Kane reports.

That, the department contends, ensures that there has been no violation of Constitutional law against cruel and unusual punishment.

But the medical board contends that lawmakers only required doctors to attend to certify that an inmate was executed. Taking part in that execution, by monitoring an inmate's vital signs as correction officials want, would violate a doctor's basic mission to preserve life, the board has determined.

Several justices on the court peppered the attorneys with questions during the hour-long hearing.

More after the jump.

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