Word: legality
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2000
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
What are you so frightened of, the Gore camp challenged--that a full recount would reveal what we have argued all along? That Gore won not only the national popular vote but the Florida vote as well? That Jeb Bush is not a controlling legal authority after all? That all those Cabinet tryouts were a little premature? What we are frightened of, the Republicans countered, is a system in which deadlines come and go at the whim of a partisan court, in which fallible vote counters are asked to read minds, in which statutes and procedures and timetables and traditions...
...were within earshot of a television early last week, you heard the consensus of the legal pundits. Florida's Supreme Court was running scared. It had been slapped down by the U.S. Supreme Court Monday and told to rethink its decision ordering manual recounts. And the experts were fixated on the fact that at oral argument last Thursday, Chief Justice Charles T. Wells asked whether his court even had a right to hear the case. The Florida justices, conventional wisdom held, were looking for a way to bow out gracefully from a showdown with the U.S. Supreme Court...
...high court's dramatic order set the stage for what may be the greatest clash of courts in American history. As the U.S. Supreme Court considers the case this week, the debate will be phrased in legal niceties: deference to state courts vs. deference to state legislatures; Article II of the U.S. Constitution and 3 U.S.C. Sec. 5. But beneath the law talk is a power struggle of epic proportions. The stakes could hardly be higher. How the U.S. Supreme Court rules could, of course, determine the next President of the United States. But something even larger is hanging...
...Florida Supreme Court majority did its best to craft an armored tank of a decision: one that would stand up to the legal bazookas and hand grenades the Republicans would be aiming at it. The decision's most quotable passages are its sweeping appeals to the nation's most cherished common values: "This Presidential election has demonstrated the vulnerability of what we believe to be a bedrock principle of democracy: that every vote counts." But below the surface, in the arguments and citations, the majority was busily building in every legal defense it could muster...
...Florida justices began their decision by meeting these concerns head-on. The first words of their legal analysis are "Article II." And the first page contains a lengthy quote from 3 U.S.C. Sec. 5. The Florida Supreme Court emphasized that the Florida legislature's statutes "govern our decision today." And to underscore that point, the decision was heavily marbled with references to state statutes...