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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lawdog who wrote (100401)	12/4/2000 2:25:57 PM
From: ColtonGang	Respond to of 769670

NYT clarification.......Today's decision, inconclusive though it was, came in response to Gov. George W. Bush's suit against the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board. The Florida tribunal, in allowing the 12-day extension, effectively allowed hand-counting of ballots that have whittled away at Mr. Bush's razor-thin margin over Mr. Gore in the state whose 25 electoral votes hold the key to the White House. Had the High Court simply thrown out the Florida ruling today, it would have been a resounding victory for Mr. Bush. And had the High Court simply upheld the Florida ruling, Mr. Gore would be celebrating. But today's decision, important as it is, is far from the final word in this case, let alone the last word in the thicket of legal cases and political disputes that surround the 2000 Presidential election four weeks after Election Day. The High Court's action today was a "per curiam" decision, meaning that it was presented as the opinion of the entire court. The Florida justices may act quickly, indeed almost immediately, to resolve the High Court's questions — and it is conceivable the Florida court could do so in a way that benefits Mr. Gore, not Mr. Bush. The High Court justices indicated they were troubled by the possibility that their Florida counterparts may have acted on the basis of the Florida Constitution, rather than state statute. The United States Constitution grants to the states the power to select presidential electors as they choose, so — the High Court's reasoning seemed to be — if the Florida jurists based their decision on state law, they might be on firm ground. But if they based it on constitutional precepts, they might be on more slippery terrain. Legal scholars were analyzing the implications at midday. There was a suggestion that the High Court's words today could amount to a road map for the Florida tribunal to refine its ruling in a way that satisfies the Supreme Court reservations. Today's per curiam decision was restrained, as befits what amounts to an interim finding. "As a general rule, this Court defers to a state court's interpretation of a state statute," the decision said. "It is fundamental that state courts be left free and unfettered by us in interpreting their state constitutions," the justices said. "But it is equally important that ambiguous or obscure adjudications by state courts do not stand as barriers to a determination by this Court of the validity under the federal Constitution of state action. Intelligent exercise of our appellate powers compels us to ask for the elimination of the obscurities and ambiguities from the opinions in such cases." From a layman's standpoint, what may be hardest to grasp is that the high court's ruling is not the final legal word in the 2000 presidential election. In a general sense, this is because the Supreme Court's powers, while enormous, are not unlimited. Indeed, a threshold question raised by some justices in arguments last Friday was whether they had jurisdiction over the case at all. The Gore-Bush case (formally and more correctly known as Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, No. 00-836) is arguably the most important one with a direct bearing on the presidency since the Watergate tapes case 26 years ago. But the issue in 1974 — whether President Richard M. Nixon had to surrender his own tape recordings — was simpler, and its outcome less ambiguous and more momentous.