All rise!

National | LAW: The Supreme Court convenes a new term next week—with religious-liberty, federalism, and law-and-order cases on the docket | Bob Jones

Sept. 8 was just a warm-up. The much-anticipated oral arguments over campaign-finance reform may have brought the Supreme Court justices back to Washington for a day, but the real work won't start until Oct. 7, when the new term officially begins.

Already the docket is half full, and analysts expect another year of 5-4 decisions from one of the most closely divided courts in history. Doug Kmiec, professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine University School of Law, says three early cases, in particular, could have far-reaching implications.

"My headline case would be Locke vs. Davey," Mr. Kmiec says. "It's the next generation of school-choice cases." The case comes from Washington State, where so-called Promise Scholarships help students pay their tuition at both public and private colleges. But when Joshua Davey tried to use his scholarship to pursue a major in theology, the state demurred, claiming that public funding for religious study would violate the separation of church and state.