Dozens of protesters mingled with tourists and waved signs saying "Ban the Washington elitists, not our guns" or "The NRA helps criminals and terrorist buy guns."

Members of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence chanted "guns kill" as followers of the Second Amendment Sisters and Maryland Shall Issue.Org shouted "more guns, less crime."

A line to get into the court for the historic arguments began forming two days earlier and extended more than a block by early Tuesday.

The high court's first extensive examination of the Second Amendment since 1939 grew out of challenge to the District of Columbia's ban on ownership of handguns.

Anise Jenkins, president of a coalition called Stand Up for Democracy in D.C., defended the district's 32-year-old ban on handgun ownership.

"We feel our local council knows what we need for a good standard of life and to keep us safe," Jenkins said.

Genie Jennings, a resident of South Perwick, Maine, and national spokewoman for Second Amendment Sisters, said the law banning handguns in Washington "is denying individuals the right to defend themselves."

The court has not conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment in the 216 years since its ratification. The basic issue for the justices is whether the amendment protects an individual's right to own guns or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia.

Even if the court determines there is an individual right, the justices still will have to decide whether the District's ban can stand and how to evaluate other gun control laws. This issue has caused division within the Bush administration, with Vice President Dick Cheney taking a harder line than the administration's official position at the court.

The local Washington government argues that its law should be allowed to remain in force whether or not the amendment applies to individuals, although it reads the amendment as intended to allow states to have armed forces.

The City Council that adopted the ban said it was justified because "handguns have no legitimate use in the purely urban environment of the District of Columbia."

Dick Anthony Heller, 65, an armed security guard, sued the District after it rejected his application to keep a handgun at his home for protection. His lawyers say the amendment plainly protects an individual's right.

The 27 words and three enigmatic commas of the Second Amendment have been analyzed again and again by legal scholars, but hardly at all by the Supreme Court.

The amendment reads: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

The last Supreme Court ruling on the topic came in 1939 in U.S. v. Miller, which involved a sawed-off shotgun. Constitutional scholars disagree over what that case means but agree it did not squarely answer the question of individual versus collective rights.

Chief Justice John Roberts said at his confirmation hearing that the correct reading of the Second Amendment was "still very much an open issue."

Carlos Jimenez was sentenced to 43 years in prison in 1995 after pleading guilty to burglary and violating the terms of his probation. Jimenez had a prior felony conviction for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

In 2005, acting as his own lawyer, Jimenez petitioned a federal court, challenging his burglary conviction and asserting that he had not received proper legal representation when he went before the state courts in San Angelo, Texas.

The federal judge said Jimenez had waited too long to file his petition and refused to extend the deadline. Federal law gives state inmates one year after a conviction is final to petition a federal court for review of their cases.

At issue is Jimenez's argument that the one-year clock should have started all over again in 2005 because of the unusual circumstances of his case.

In 1996, a state appeals court dismissed Jimenez's appeal after a court-appointed lawyer said in court papers that in his professional opinion, Jimenez had no grounds for an appeal.

Nearly six years later, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed to let Jimenez file an appeal based on his argument that his attorney in 1996 had not properly notified him of what the attorney was planning to do. The appeals court wrapped up its work on Jimenez's belated petitions in 2005, after affirming his conviction and sentence.

The court will hear arguments in the fall in the case of Cesar Sarausad II. He was convicted for his role as the driver in the shooting in which Melissa Fernandes, 16, was killed and Brent Mason, 17, was wounded outside a Seattle high school on March 23, 1994.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco overturned the conviction because of faulty jury instructions.

In his instructions to the jury, Judge Larry A. Jordan said Sarausad could be convicted of murder regardless of whether he knew of any plan for a killing. The appeals panel ruled that the jury should have been told Sarausad could be convicted of murder only if he knew what was being planned.

The state of Washington asked the Supreme Court to reinstate the conviction, which had been upheld by state appeals courts.

The reliability of crime labs has been questioned in several states and at the federal level in recent years.

State and federal courts have come to different conclusions about whether recent Supreme Court decisions affirming the constitutional right of a defendant to confront his accusers extend to lab reports that are used in many drug and other cases.

The case the justices accepted, and will consider in the fall, comes from Massachusetts. Luis Melendez-Diaz was convicted of trafficking in cocaine partly on the basis of a crime lab analysis that confirmed that cocaine was in plastic bags found in the car in which Melendez-Diaz was riding.

Rather than accept the report, however, Melendez-Diaz objected that he should be allowed to question the person who prepared it about testing methods, how the evidence was preserved and a host of other issues.

Last week the Delaware Chancery Court ruled that CNet's bylaws do not give it the ability to prevent a group of dissident shareholders led by an affiliate of hedge fund Jana Partners LLC from nominating directors to the company's board or proposing an increase to the board's size.

The court's decision "incorrectly calls into question the bylaws of a large number of companies with the same or similar bylaw provisions," CNet said in a release. The company said its stockholder-approved bylaws are "fully applicable" to the hedge fund.

A "costly and disruptive proxy contest" is not in the best interest of stockholders, and Jana should not be able to seek control of CNet without paying a premium, the company said.

In a letter to CNet Chief Executive Neil Ashe issued earlier Monday, Jana managing partner Barry Rosenstein questioned whether an appeal would benefit shareholders. "We believe it is time for fundamental strategic and operational change at CNet, and that the nominees we have proposed... have the collective experience and expertise to successfully implement this change," he wrote.

Jana had about a 10 percent stake in CNET as of Dec. 31.