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 Knox, 27, and her former boyfriend, Italian Raffaele Sollecito,
were convicted for the second time last year in the killing of 21
year-old student Kercher, who was found stabbed to death in a house
the women shared in Perugia, central Italy.
Now the Court of Cassation must choose whether to confirm the
conviction or order a retrial in a case for which Knox and
Sollecito, who have both maintained their innocence throughout, have
already served four years in jail.
The high-profile case has inspired books and at least two films, and
Kercher's family said Meredith, the real victim, risked being
forgotten.
Originally portrayed as a fast-living partygoer and initially
convicted of murdering Kercher when a sex game went wrong, Knox came
to be seen in much of her home country as a victim of a botched
investigation and an unwieldy justice system.
The judges who passed the second guilty verdict, handing Knox a
28-1/2-year jail sentence and Sollecito 25 years, said the murder
was the result of a domestic argument.
 The Cassation Court is making a technical judgment on the validity
of the last conviction, which the defense says is flawed. If the
conviction is scrapped, the case will almost certainly go back to an
appeals court for the third time.
If the conviction is confirmed, Sollecito, whose passport has been
confiscated, could face a return to jail in his home country, and
Italy may ask the United States to extradite Knox from her hometown
of Seattle, where she has been since 2011, when the pair were
acquitted on appeal and freed.
Knox, who did not attend last year's trial, has vowed to fight the
conviction and said she would not willingly return to Italy.
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Legal experts are split on the likely outcome if Italian authorities
seek her return.
Some say a "double jeopardy" U.S. constitutional ban on retrial for
the same offence after an acquittal would stand in Knox's favor, and
that U.S. courts would frown on her having been tried in absentia.
Others argue the very existence of an extradition treaty implies
that the United States accepts the Italian justice system,
strengthening the case for extradition.
The U.S. State Department has said officials are monitoring the
case.
Ivory Coast-born Rudy Guede is serving a 16-year jail sentence for
the crime after a separate trial. Judges ruled he did not act alone.
(Reporting by Isla Binnie; editing by John Stonestreet)
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