The arguments being heard by the Supreme Court today in Dukes vs. Wal-Mart are about whether there is enough of a connection between 1.5 million workers to validate their discrimination as a class-action suit. But this is not just the largest class-action suit ever, it is also the largest gender discrimination case in history. The plaintiffs are arguing that the world’s largest corporation maintained paid women less money, denied them promotions, and perpetuated a culture rife with gender stereotyping. And it will be heard by a Supreme Court with three female Justices — the most ever in history. Will their decision come down to gender vs. business?

For the past 11 years, 1.5 million women have been taking on the world’s largest corporation, Wal-Mart, for what they claim is a corporate practice of gender discrimination. The case would be the largest employment discrimination suit in U.S. history, damages could be in the billions, and the whole process has already dragged on over a decade. But whether that suit will ever be heard in court still has to be decided. Today the United States Supreme Court will hear argument in Wal-Mart vs. Dukes. Their task is to decide whether such a large and diverse group of people — working for shops across the country — can even be considered a “class” and therefore capable of raising a claim.

There are 95 vacancies in the federal courts, forcing semi-retired senior judges to pick up the slack — a lot of it. Arizona judges are under particular duress; their courts have such a back load, they can’t meet the Speedy Trial Act, a law that requires courts to try criminal defendants within 70 days after they are charged. Caseloads in most federal courts continue to increase while the number of active judges shrinks — and yet 45  judicial nominees are languishing in the Senate. Why hasn't the Senate confirmed these nominees? 

According to a New York Times article released today, the Obama administration is planning to prosecute Guantanamo detainees in military commission trials. This follows decisions by Congress to prevent these prisoners from being brought to the U.S. and tried in federal courts.

Virginia judge Henry E. Hudson ruled yesterday that the insurance mandate in the new health care legislation was unconstitutional. But President Obama seems unflappable in the face of the decision. Why? 

For decades, cities across the country have tried a variety of approaches to reduce gang violence. Recently, Long Beach, California has implemented court-ordered civil injunctions, allowing law enforcement to arrest known gang members in particular neighborhoods for minor infractions. These infractions include wearing gang colors, carrying a cell phone in a car, or leaving the house after 8 p.m. Is it working? 

In a recession economy, all of us – including government agencies – are doing what we can to make ends meet, and that includes states' legal systems. A new report released by NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice reveals that states are imposing new court fees for individuals with criminal convictions. The fees are described as “user fees,” as they are not the traditional obligations levied for punishment, deterrence, or rehabilitation. Instead, these fees serve only to pay back the court system as it attempts to recoup operational costs.

Sometimes a word is just a word. But other times, it’s an indicator of something more troubling on the part of the speaker. Take, for example, the word “boy.” When being used to refer to a small child, most of us don’t think twice. But when the word “boy” refers to an adult black man, and the speaker is his white supervisor who’s just passed him up for a promotion, it takes on a much different meaning.

It’s for this reason that John Hithon, an employee of the Tyson chicken processing plant in Gadsden, Alabama, sued his employers for workplace discrimination.

More than 5,000 women have been murdered in Guatemala in the past 10 years and many were tortured and mutilated in the process. Fewer than two percent of those killings have been prosecuted. This week, a federal court decided that these horrible statistics may be enough of a reason to classify all Guatemalan women as a social group eligible for asylum in the U.S.

In 1996, Curtis Flowers, a 39 year-old African American, was accused of murdering four people in Mississippi. He now prepares to go to trial for a sixth time. The previous court appearances resulted in two mistrials and three overturned convictions. The stark racial divide in the small Mississippi community of Winona is making it nearly impossible to build a jury of Flowers’ peers, says Charlie Smith, news editor at The Greenwood Commonwealth, who has been following the trial.

The question everybody is asking this week has been, who is 30-year-old Faisal Shahzad, the man held and accused of placing a car bomb in New York's Times Square over the weekend? After two days of intense interrogation efforts, news continues to trickle in about the motives and connections behind the attempted attack.

A quadriplegic mother is at risk of losing her five-month-old son in a custody battle with the baby's father, who cites her quadriplegia as a reason to deny her custody. Should the courts be involved in such cases? If so, where does ADA regulation end and family law begin? Lisa Belkin introduces us to various custody cases involving parents with disabilities, and Dr. Corinne Vinopol, president of the Institute for Disabilities Research and Training and a hearing officer in disability disputes, shares her insights about parenting, disabilities, and the law. 

Follow along with New York Times' readers at Lisa Belkin's blog post on this story.

The man who calls himself the 'mastermind' of the 9/11 terror attacks is heading to trial in U.S. federal court. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four of his alleged co-conspirators will be moved from Guantánamo Bay to face trial in lower Manhattan – just blocks away from the World Trade Center site. We speak to Slate senior editor Dahlia Lithwick about some of the challenges involved in such a trial. We also hear from attorney Jonathan Hafetz, co-editor of "The Guantanamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison Outside the Law." Hafetz represents Mohamedou Slahi, a Guantánamo detainee who may also be headed to the same civilan court.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and four other men accused in the plot will be prosecuted in federal court in New York City, a federal law enforcement official said earlier today.

Joining us to discuss the implications of this announcement on the president's promise to close Guantánamo Bay is Jonathan Mahler, contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and author of the book "The Challenge: How a Maverick Navy Officer and a Young Law Professor Risked Their Careers to Defend the Constitution — and Won."

Last year, Judge Robert T. Russell, Jr. of Buffalo, N.Y., started the nation's first veterans' court to deal with the specific needs of former military personnel accused of minor crimes. Judge Russell joins us to explain how and why he started the court, while Tom Zabarowski, a former Army enlistee, explains how Judge Russell helped him to regain his life.

It's Monday, which means it is time to pull out our road map for the week. Our guide this week is our own Washington correspondent Todd Zwillich. On the agenda? A California court is expected to rule on the controversial ballot initiative Proposition 8 that barred gay marriage. The court will decide whether the initiative is legal and the fate of those couples already married in California. And President Obama is expected to announce his pick for the U.S. Supreme Court this week. Also this week Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbass and the U.K.'s Prince Harry will be in the U.S. Abbass will talk about Mideast peace, while Harry is likely to play polo.

The Supreme Court has set its agenda for the week and will hear arguments on two cases involving civil rights. The first case involves the strip search of a young girl by school administrators hot in pursuit of...ibuprofen. They had received a tip that she was distributing, but turned up nothing in their search of the honor student. While this seems like a blatant and outrageous violation of the girl's fourth amendment rights, the Court has upheld such searches and allows the court to revisit the issue of whether civil rights can be limited at the schoolhouse door in order to protect the health, safety, or morals of the children within.

Next on the docket is a look at affirmative action in practice in the city of New Haven, Connecticut. The court will hear arguments on behalf of several firefighters (mostly white, but one is Latino) who feel that the city violated their rights to equal opportunity for work by eliminating a test that put firefighters who passed the exam on track for promotion. One of the firefighters, who had severe dyslexia, got tutoring and studied for thirteen hours a day and passed it. But no African American candidates on the firefighting force passed it, which prompted the city of New Haven to eliminate the test on the ground that it showed a gross disparity of opportunity for black firefighters than for whites.

Joining The Takeaway to discuss these cases and more is Kenji Yoshino, the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Law at NYU law school.

A U.S. judge has ruled that a class action lawsuit can move ahead against several large companies accused of helping South Africa's apartheid-era government in violation of international human rights law. The case has been going on since 2002 and was initially filed against 50 corporations and involved ten lawsuits claiming more than $400 billion in damages. While the cases have been consolidated to only two lawsuits against five companies, the corporations are a who's who of American companies: the computer giant IBM, Ford and General Motors are among the U.S. companies facing demands for damages from thousands of apartheid's victims. The BBC's Lucy Bailey has more.