Supreme Court begins new term Monday

WASHINGTON -- The freedom to burn a cross, the post-prison privacy rights of sex predators and copyright protection for lingerie will occupy the Supreme Court as the justices step from behind red velvet drapes and into their courtroom next week.

The term's biggest news, however, may come from cases still making their way to the high court.

"There are some elephants here, but the elephants are standing in the wings," said court scholar David Garrow, a law professor at Emory University.

The court soon may face its first case testing the government's power to limit traditional civil liberties and legal rights in the name of combating terrorism. Fights also loom over affirmative action on college campuses and the new campaign finance law.

The court term that begins Monday may also be remembered as the final one for Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who has passed his 30th anniversary on the court, or for one of the other justices thought to be close to retirement.

None of the nine justices has indicated immediate plans to leave.

The court is taking a look at whether states went too far in passing child-protection laws commonly known as Megan's laws and whether California's "three-strikes-you're-out" sentencing law is unconstitutionally harsh.

"This is about locking people up for the rest of their lives for taking $150 worth of children's videos," American Civil Liberties senior lawyer Steven Shapiro said about the California law, the nation's toughest. The law allows up to a life prison term for a third felony, even for a nonviolent crime.

The cross-burning case evokes a mostly bygone era in the South, when nightriders set crosses ablaze as a symbol of intimidation to blacks and civil rights sympathizers. Virginia and other states tried to outlaw the practice, but the laws have run into trouble on free-speech grounds.

Two cases ask whether registries of convicted sex offenders, some posted on the Internet, are unfair to criminals who already have served sentences or who may have committed crimes such as exposing oneself in public.

Every state has some form of Megan's law, named for a New Jersey child killed by a sex criminal who moved in across the street. The laws are supposed to make it easier for neighbors and parents to keep tabs on potential predators, but civil liberties defenders complain the laws can make targets of people who have already paid their debts to society.

An abortion case pits abortion clinics against protesters who blocked doors and threatened or intimidated patients.

The term is heavy on cases affecting business, including a colorful fight over whether lingerie merchant Victoria's Secret was damaged by the opening of a sex toy shop called Victor's Little Secret.

Sometime this term, the justices almost surely will be asked to look at one or more cases arising from the treatment of immigrants and potential terror suspects swept up as a result of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The court may choose not to get involved right away, but if it does, most lawyers predict a law-and-order majority would allow the government great leeway to order secret deportation hearings or hold noncitizens indefinitely. It is less clear whether the court would approve of the treatment of at least two U.S. citizens now held without charges and without access to lawyers.

Dozens of groups and individuals are challenging the campaign finance overhaul on free speech and other grounds. The case should reach the high court by spring, and lawyers said the justices will probably hear it quickly.

On affirmative action, white students denied admission to the University of Michigan and its law school have asked the high court to declare the school's race-conscious admissions policy unconstitutional.

It is unclear whether the justices want to revisit a deeply divisive issue about which several of them hold strong opinions, said the former Clinton administration's top Supreme Court lawyer, Walter Dellinger. Each side may have reason to fear how the case would come out, he said.

Speculation about retirements on the high court is particularly intense this year. All but one of the justices are past age 60; Justice John Paul Stevens is 83.

A departure would end a period of remarkable stability on the court. The same nine justices have served together since 1994, the longest such stretch since early in the 19th century.

In that time, the court has solidified along ideological lines, with Rehnquist and four other conservatives in the majority. Increasingly, the court resolves its most contentious cases by a 5-4 vote.

"I suspect the justices know each other well enough they could write each other's opinions, even on the other side," said Mary Cheh, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University.