Brief summaries of the rulings from the leading cases before the Supreme Court in its just-ended term:

GUN BAN

Ruled that Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense and hunting. It was the justices' first major pronouncement on gun rights in history. The 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia's 32-year-old ban on handguns as incompatible with gun rights under the Second Amendment. The decision went further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most firearms laws intact. Within two days, lawsuit were filed in San Francisco and Chicago challenging similar handgun bans.

The court had not conclusively interpreted the amendment since its ratification in 1791. 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 basic issue for the justices was whether the amendment protects an individual's right to own guns no matter what, or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia.

Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said an individual right to bear arms is supported by "the historical narrative" both before and after the amendment was adopted. The Constitution does not permit "the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home," Scalia said. The court also struck down Washington's requirement that firearms be equipped with trigger locks or kept disassembled, but left intact the licensing of guns. Joining Scalia were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.

In a historic ruling, the US Supreme Court on Thursday declared 5 to 4 that the Second Amendment's guarantee of a right to "keep and bear arms" means that the government cannot enact an outright ban on certain commonly held weapons or otherwise prevent citizens from having a gun at home for personal protection or other lawful uses.

The landmark constitutional pronouncement came as the nation's highest court struck down a 32-year ban on private possession of handguns in Washington, D.C. The court also invalidated two other strict gun-control measures in the district that required that rifles and shotguns at all times be kept disassembled or secured with a trigger lock. The case is District of Columbia v. Heller.

"We hold that the District's ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the majority opinion.

The majority justices said the District's strict gun regulations violated "the right of law-abiding responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home."

Justice Scalia's majority opinion was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito.

In a dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer said the case would spawn unfortunate consequences. "The decision threatens to throw into doubt the constitutionality of gun laws throughout the United States," Justice Breyer wrote. "I can find no sound legal basis for launching the courts on so formidable and potentially dangerous a mission."

Scalia and the majority justices declined to spell out precisely the legal standard future courts should use in weighing whether someone's Second Amendment right had been infringed. But they left no doubt that it is a robust one.

"Under any standards of scrutiny that we have applied to enumerated constitutional rights, banning from the home the most preferred firearm in the nation to keep and use for protection of one's home and family, would fail constitutional muster," Scalia wrote.

While the high court struck down the Washington, D.C., regulations, it remains unclear how many other gun-control measures may now be on shaky constitutional ground. Some analysts suggest that a handgun ban in Chicago, similar to the ban in Washington, may emerge as the next constitutional battleground over gun rights.

Scalia sought to address concerns by many critics – and the dissenting justices – that such a ruling might lead to an arms race among American homeowners stocking up with machine guns, grenades, and rocket launchers.

"The right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited," Scalia wrote. "Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill," he said. The opinion did not undermine laws "forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings," he said.

He added that the opinion did not undercut laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

In a 5-4 vote, the court said the Louisiana law allowing the death penalty to be imposed in such cases violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

"The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion. His four liberal colleagues joined him, while the four more conservative justices dissented.

There has not been an execution in the United States for a crime that did not also involve the death of the victim in 44 years.

Patrick Kennedy, 43, was sentenced to death for the rape of his 8-year-old stepdaughter in Louisiana. He is one of two people in the United States, both in Louisiana, who have been condemned to death for a rape that was not also accompanied by a killing.

The Supreme Court banned executions for rape in 1977 in a case in which the victim was an adult woman.

Forty-five states ban the death penalty for any kind of rape, and the other five states allow it for child rapists. Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas allow executions in such cases if the defendant had previously been convicted of raping a child.

The court struggled over how to apply standards laid out in decisions barring executions for the mentally retarded and people younger than 18 when they committed murder. In those cases, the court cited trends in the states away from capital punishment.

The justices will likely hear oral arguments around the end of the year in the case of Edward Jerome Harbison, who was convicted in the 1983 beating death of an elderly woman in Chattanooga.

Federal appeals courts have taken different positions on the issue, making the case a good one for the court to resolve, the Bush administration said. The administration wants the justices to decide that federal law for indigent capital defendants does not extend taxpayer support to inmates' efforts to win clemency.

Separately, Harbison's execution is on hold after a federal judge ruled in September that Tennessee's three-drug lethal injection method amounted to cruel and unusual punishment because of the "substantial risk of unnecessary pain" to the inmate. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is now considering that case, following the high court's decision in April that upheld the constitutionality of lethal injection in Kentucky.

Harbison asked in 2006 to expand the responsibilities of his federal public defenders to also represent him in state clemency proceedings if he lost his court challenges.

Justice Department lawyers have argued against Harbison's request. "There is no constitutional right either to clemency itself or to counsel to pursue it," Justice Department lawyers said in the filing.

The justices have twice before reinstated the death sentence for Gary Bradford Cone, who was convicted of beating an elderly couple to death in Memphis during a robbery.

Cone acknowledged that he killed the couple, but said he was temporarily insane because of drugs and the stress of his wartime Vietnam experiences.

He argued that state and federal courts never considered his claims that the state withheld evidence of his drug use. A panel of the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that Cone's plea had no merit. The dissenting judge said Cone's claims were never fairly considered by either state or federal courts.

The appeals court had twice before issued rulings favorable to Cone, but was overruled each time by the Supreme Court.

Under a Wednesday ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, employers that contract an outside business to transmit text messages can't read them unless the worker agrees.

Users of text messaging services "have a reasonable expectation of privacy" in their messages stored on the service provider's network, Judge Kim Wardlaw wrote in the three-judge panel's unanimous opinion.

The ruling also lets employers access employee e-mails only if they are kept on an internal server.

The text message part of the ruling will affect more employers. According to analysts, the majority of U.S. companies pay outside parties to transmit their workers' text messages but most keep their workers' e-mail on internal servers.