Washington ? The freedom to burn a cross, the postprison 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 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 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.