ASHINGTON - Lawyers for George W. Bush yesterday asked the highest court of the land to bring ''legal finality'' to the presidential election by ruling that the Florida Supreme Court acted unconstitutionally when permitting the manual recounts of votes in three counties.
Gore's attorneys, in briefs filed in advance of a hearing before the high court Friday, argued just as adamantly that the case did not belong in federal court and that the justices should affirm the Florida court's right to interpret state laws. The three-county recount had paved the way for Al Gore to contest the certified results.
''There is really no legal basis whatsoever for Governor Bush's claims that either considerations of fairness or federalism or the laws of Congress require any interference with what the courts of Florida have done,'' said Laurence Tribe, the Harvard Law School professor who is Gore's lawyer in the US Supreme Court case.
Legal scholars have suggested that Bush's appeal is near meaningless now, since the tally certified Sunday by Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris has him defeating Gore by 537 ballots and winning the state's 25 electoral votes.
But Bush's lawyers insisted yesterday that by ''changing the rules in the middle of the game'' - that is, extending the certification deadline that permitted some recount results - the Florida Supreme Court denied Bush a margin of as many as 930 votes.
''The vote count, finalized on Nov. 14, plus the count of absentee ballots on Nov. 18, should be the final result,'' said a Bush lawyer who provided background information to reporters. ''As long as the contest goes on, the number of votes matters a great deal.''
Bush's lawyers acknowledged that a US Supreme Court ruling favorable to them would probably not end Gore's current challenge in Florida courts to Sunday's certification. But they suggested that overturning the Florida Supreme Court ruling would make it more difficult for the vice president to press successfully his case for recounting ballots in heavily Democratic Miami-Dade county, which did not begin a partial recount until after the original deadline had passed.
Joshua Rosenkranz, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, said Gore's official contesting of the certified results in Florida is far more important and reduces the US Supreme Court case to ''a tempest in a teapot.''
''The Supreme Court is not going to decide the election on this case, that's for sure,'' he said.
Yet that doesn't mean that it won't be important when the US Supreme Court weighs in in the case of Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, et al., legal scholars said yesterday.
If the justices uphold the recount decision, they will be affirming the Florida Supreme Court's authority over the state Legislature and its election laws. Such a ruling might discourage GOP lawmakers in Florida from trying to pass a measure that would award the state's electoral votes to Bush.
It also would bolster Gore's hopes of persuading Florida courts to review ballots that were disputed and not included in the certified count. Bush's lawyers say there is no need to recount those ballots and no authority under the state's election laws to do so.
Bush's hopes in the high court rest on the argument that the US Constitution and federal statutes give state legislatures the sole authority to write election laws. By letting the recounts go on past the seven-day deadline set by the Legislature prior to the election, Bush lawyers argue, the Florida Supreme Court in effect rewrote state law and also violated federal law.
''The Florida Supreme Court's decision, which conflicts with both federal statutes and the federal Constitution, will thus continue to affect, and has the theoretical potential to change, the outcome of the presidential election in Florida, and thus the nation,'' the Bush brief said.
The Gore lawyers disagreed. ''The Florida court played a familiar and quintessentially judicial role'' in reconciling conflicting state laws when it extended the recount deadline to Nov. 26, they said. ''The Florida court applied garden-variety principles of statutory interpretation.''
In agreeing to hear the case Friday, the justices asked each side to explain what the consequences would be if they ruled that the Florida Supreme Court violated federal law. Bush's attorneys said it would mean that the Florida secretary of state had the authority to certify the election on Nov. 18, which would increase Bush's margin of victory and possibly invalidate some of Gore's current legal challenges.
It would also help avoid a possible ''constitutional crisis'' if Florida's Legislature should go forward with selecting its own slate of electors, Bush's lawyers said.
''By acting now to reject the Florida Supreme Court's unwarranted intrusion into the regulation of the manner of appointing electors, this court will eliminate the potential for a constitutional crisis,'' Bush's lawyers wrote.
Gore's brief said that if the Supreme Court overturned the ruling of the Florida Supreme Court, it would undermine the authority of the judiciary to interpret the law, a principle affirmed in the historic Marbury v. Madison ruling of 1803.
There are political consequences for Gore, too. First, it would be a greater burden to overtake Bush's lead if the vote count reverted to the Nov. 18 tally. Second, it might make the Florida Supreme Court reluctant to act boldly in other matters, like the ''butterfly ballot'' case from Palm Beach County. Third, a Bush victory in the US Supreme Court might reinforce the perception and presumption that the governor of Texas has claim to the White House.
''Public opinion already seems to be shifting away from Gore, and putting the prestige of the Supreme Court behind Bush could have a tremendous effect on Gore as he tries to keep contesting the election,'' said Robert Justin Lipkin, a professor of constitutional law at Widener University School of Law.
Interest groups with a political stake in the outcome filed friend-of-the-court briefs with the Supreme Court. The American Civil Liberties Union defended the Florida Supreme Court's action, arguing that ''if that decision-making process is now called into question, the role of the courts as a guardian of voting rights is likely to diminish.''
The American Center for Law and Justice, a group associated with the Christian Coalition, urged the court to overturn the state court ruling.
''The voters of Florida and the American public are entitled to a presidential election conducted according to the US Constitution and the rule of law, not tainted by judicial activism,'' said Jay Sekulow, the group's counsel.
All arguments aside, the Supreme Court still had the option of deciding that events had overtaken any opinion it might issue, and not to hear or rule on the case at all. Court-watchers doubted that would happen; the Supreme Court understands its opinion could add legitimacy to the presidential quest of Gore or Bush, and it has already signalled its intent to be a player as the drama unfolds.
