Today, Sept. 24, the Supreme Court will fill much of its argument calendar for the year.

By federal law, the Court’s annual Term begins on the first Monday in October of each year, which this year will begin next week on Oct. 1.

The Monday of the week before each Term starts, the nine justices come back to work to hold their pre-Term conference, where they vote on all the petitions that have accumulated at the courthouse over the past three months asking for the High Court to take a case from federal appeals courts and state supreme courts—well over 1,000 petitions for what is called a writ of certioriari, whereby the Supreme Court takes a case.

The two highest-profile cases being considered for hearings today are of particular interest to millions of Americans on both sides. The Court will consider taking two of the biggest gay-rights cases in American history, one asking whether part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional, and another asking whether the provision in the California Constitution affirming marriage as the union of a man and woman violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

We’ll publish a follow-up report after the Court releases its orders announcing which cases it will hear.

Breitbart News legal contributor Ken Klukowski is on faculty at Liberty University School of Law.