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Politics : Piffer Thread on Political Rantings and Ravings -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: arno who wrote (402)	11/24/2000 10:38:12 PM
From: Original Mad Dog	Respond to of 14610

msnbc.com High court zeroes in on two issues Justices want arguments on due process, separation of powers By Tom Curry MSNBC Nov. 24 — The U.S. Supreme Court will weigh two major issues when it takes its unprecedented step into Florida’s election dispute next week: Did Florida’s high court usurp the Florida Legislature’s power, and did it violate voters’ rights to due process? FLORIDA’S SUPREME COURT had ruled this week that Secretary of State Katherine Harris had to accept manually recounted ballots until Sunday instead of holding to the state’s Nov. 14 deadline for counties to submit election returns. Bush’s lawyers argue that Article II of the U.S. Constitution explicitly gives full power to a state’s Legislature — not its Supreme Court — over the appointment of presidential electors. Article II says: “Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors ... .” In its order Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court asked lawyers to present arguments on that and on a related question: Did the Florida Supreme Court’s ruling devising election procedures after the election violate voters’ due-process rights? At issue is a federal law that appears to require that controversies over how to select electors be resolved under laws enacted before Election Day. In the legal brief they filed with the Supreme Court, Bush’s attorneys argued that the federal law is designed to prevent “precisely what is happening in Florida today, where the candidate who did not receive the most votes and his supporters are attempting to overturn the results of the Presidential election by changing the rules after the election has been held.” But in their legal briefs, Gore’s attorneys said it would be unconstitutional meddling for the U.S. Supreme Court to enter the controversy. Gore’s legal team said that the Constitution leaves it to the state government to resolve election controversies and that the justices should simply let the state government do its job. For the U.S. Supreme Court to enter the fray would be, Gore’s lawyers argued, “a significant intrusion into a matter – the selection of electors – that is both fundamental to state sovereignty and constitutionally reserved to the States." The Gore legal team also contended that the Florida Supreme Court had every right to interpret Florida statutes and election rules and to set a deadline of Nov. 27 counties to report their vote tallies to Harris. “The decision by the Supreme Court of Florida amounts to an ordinary act of statutory interpretation of a law enacted prior to the election, not to a new ‘enactment,’” Gore’s lawyer argued. BOTH SIDES CONFIDENT Attorneys for both candidates sounded optimistic and said the Supreme Court’s involvement should be looked at as a positive development. Ben Ginsburg, an attorney for Bush, said the court’s decision to step into the middle of a presidential election for the first time in U.S. history was proper. “We had faith in the arguments,” he told MSNBC. Barry Richard, an attorney for Bush, told MSNBC’s Lester Holt on Friday night, “I think Americans will go to work Monday morning confident that their electoral system is working.” Gore’s lead attorney in Florida, David Boies, said Friday night, “The Supreme Court may have thought quite correctly that this is the kind of issue that has to be resolved and that it is important that it be resolved in a final way.” In an interview earlier with MSNBC’s Chris Jansing, Boies said he’d be surprised if the justices ruled in Bush’s favor. “I am confident that the United States Supreme Court is not going to overturn this election,” Boies said. Boies’ colleague Kendall Coffey told Holt it was important that the Republicans be seen as getting “their proverbial day in court. ... That’s the way it should be.” HIGH-PROFILE COUNSEL The justices said they would hear an hour and a half of arguments at 10 a.m. ET next Friday. Court tradition requires agreement from four of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices to hear a case. Typically, the court does not release a list of who voted to hear a case and who dissented, but NBC News correspondent Pete Williams reported that no justices publicly dissented from the decision to hear Bush’s appeal. In all likelihood, Gore’s side will be presented by Harvard University law professor Laurence Tribe, who has long experience in arguing cases before the justices and who has often been mentioned as potential nominee to the high court by a Democratic president. In 1987, Tribe took a leading role in urging the Senate to reject Robert Bork, the conservative jurist Ronald Reagan nominated to the Supreme Court. Tribe is listed as the counsel of record in the briefs that Gore campaign filed with the court on Thursday, seeking to persuade them to not hear Bush’s appeal. Arguing for Bush will likely be Theodore Olson, a former Reagan administration Justice Department official who is now in private practice with the Washington law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Olson, too, has Supreme Court experience: In February, he was the victorious attorney in a case concerning the constitutionality of certain Hawaii state elections that were limited only to the descendants of the original inhabitants of Hawaii. The justices agreed with Olson’s arguments and struck down the law. While accepting one of Bush’s appeals, the justices rejected a second. In that petition, Bush’s attorneys had sought to bypass a federal appeals court and directly make the case to the Supreme Court that Florida vote count violated the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the law for all citizens. In effect, the justices decided that Bush’s lawyers would first have to try to make that case in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. MSNBC’s Lester Holt and Chris Jansing and The Associated Press contributed to this report.