Law profs protest high-court recount decision

Nearly 600 law school professors from around the country have publicly lambasted the United States Supreme Court for its 5-4 decision in December that effectively ended a series of recounts ordered by various Florida courts following the Nov. 7 presidential election.

Earlier this week, a group of 585 law professors from 115 law schools around the nation -- including 17 professors from President George W. Bush's home state of Texas -- "spent big bucks on a full-page advertisement in the New York Times," according to Dave Zweifel, an editorial writer for the Capital Times newspaper in Madison, Wis.

The professors said they were confused and upset by the high court's decision and, Zweifel said, "are wondering how to justify" the decision "to their law students."

The ad began: "We are professors of law at 115 American law schools. But we all agree that when a bare majority of the U.S. Supreme Court halted the recount of ballots under Florida law, the five justices were acting as political proponents for candidate Bush, not as judges.

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"It is not the job of a federal court to stop votes from being counted. By stopping the recount in the middle, the five justices acted to suppress the facts," the ad said.

"Justice Scalia argued that the justices had to interfere even before the Supreme Court heard the Bush team's arguments because the recount might cast a cloud upon what [Bush] claims to be the legitimacy of his election," the professors claimed in the ad.

"In their words, the conservative justices moved to avoid the 'threat' that Americans might learn that in the recount, Gore got more votes than Bush. This is presumably 'irreparable' harm because if the recount proceeded and the truth once became known, it would never again be possible to completely obscure the facts," said the ad.

"But it is not the job of the courts to polish the image of legitimacy of the Bush presidency by preventing disturbing facts from being confirmed. Suppressing the facts to make the Bush government seem more legitimate is the job of propagandists, not judges," the ad said.

It concluded: "By taking power from the voters, the Supreme Court has tarnished its own legitimacy. As teachers whose lives have been dedicated to the rule of law, we protest."

The Capital Times said more professors were adding their names to the list, which already "consists of a who's who of major university law professors."

"All further proof that the question of the legitimacy of this presidency is not going to go away," the editorial said.

Bush officials -- prior to taking office -- and a host of Republican congressional supporters lauded the Supreme Court's decision to end the recounts because they say the Florida Supreme Court had twice erred in ordering new recounts that were not permitted under current state statutes.

Also, GOP supporters insist that the nation's highest court initially gave the Florida justices an opportunity to correct their mistaken interpretation of state law, which they failed to do when they again ordered recounts in just a few counties without citing state statutes that permitted them.

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Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the Florida Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit that had been filed by a Naples man challenging the constitutionality of the state's manual recount law after the Nov. 7 election.

Reports said Matt Butler, a Floridian who had cast a ballot for Mr. Bush, had intervened in the post-election legal fight between the former Texas governor and then-Vice President Al Gore.

Butler simultaneously filed a lawsuit arguing that Florida's recount law was unconstitutional because it allowed for candidates and political parties -- but not voters -- to seek recounts.

The unsigned, single-sentence order issued by the justices said they dismissed the case because the 2000 presidential election had already been decided.

Nevertheless, despite the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling and the Florida secretary of state's certification of Bush's 537-vote margin of victory, indeed the "issue" has yet to be completely settled because a number of newspapers and news media organizations are currently staging recounts of about 65,000 so-called "undervotes" -- ballots with no clear presidential choice -- in all 67 Florida counties.

In a bit of a surprise for Gore supporters, however, canvassing board officials in heavily Democratic Miami-Dade County announced last week that a re-examination of that county's undervotes actually gave Bush a net gain of six votes.

Gore, during the post-election legal wrangling, had repeatedly insisted on a full recount of votes in Miami-Dade because he said he could gain "as many as" 600 or more votes.

The full recount of all undervotes is still under way and officials had no word on when they would be completed.