Law enforcement officials said Mr. Williams still had not formally retained a lawyer as of this afternoon.

Its most famous academic, the previous Pope Benedict XVI, served as a professor there until 1977 and formally retains his chair in theology.

Sark formally retained it until January 2004, when the Chief Pleas in a 14-9 vote removed it from the statutes.

While the law formally retains the best mode requirement, by making insufficient disclosure no longer an allowable defense against patent infringement, the law renders best mode unenforceable.

He took the title King of Albania, which title he formally retained until he abdicated as Albanian monarch in 1943.

The Cook Islands, which based its statutes on New Zealand law, formally retained the death penalty for treason until it was abolished in 2007.

Though he remained a representative for the government, and continued to be active to a degree in the execution of the Plan, he could not formally retain his post as an overt member of a pro-Jewish faction.

In at least one of those cases, a Drexel official said, Mr. Boesky never signed the letter formally retaining Drexel.

Although Ms. Glaspie formally retains the title of American Ambssador to Iraq, she has not been there since she left just before the invasion and her successor is about to be named.

Conservative Judaism formally retains it.