ASHINGTON - It is meant to be above it all, a member of the one branch of government that keeps its hands clean of the dirty matter of politics.
But now that the US Supreme Court has become a critical and controversial part of the battle for the presidency, the high court is in danger of losing its traditional role as impartial arbiter of constitutional disagreements, analysts say.
Instead of soothing the nation's deep political wounds caused by the fought-to-a-tie election, the court may merely enter the increasingly bitter partisan arena now occupied by a mutually distrusting Democratic White House and Republican Congress.
''There's an incredibly great risk that the Supreme Court is going to get sucked into the political warfare'' in the nation's capital, said Heather Gerken, a professor at Harvard Law School. ''It would be a tremendous blow to the country'' if that happened, she said.
Certainly, the Supreme Court has handed down decisions in the past that have shaped American life and liberty. But the current case is highly unusual, legal scholars say, because of the practical magnitude of the issues raised and the public disagreement displayed by a court closely divided along partisan and philosophical lines.
It is especially uncommon for the high court to issue a stay, as it did on Saturday when it stopped the recount of disputed ballots in Florida.
But the fact that the court may not, if the split over issuing the stay endures after today's oral arguments, find common legal ground to issue a unanimous or nearly unanimous opinion puts the nine Supreme Court justices at risk of partisan attacks on their credibility, said Charles Umbanhower, a constitutional law professor at St. Olaf College in Minnesota.
''When you do something very unusual like that, you want to be united,'' Umbanhower said. ''When you see this, the Supreme Court looks like partisan hacks.
''I think the court has damaged itself,'' Umbanhower added. ''I think they're going to be one of the biggest casualties in this whole thing. I'm very depressed about what's happened here.''
Some conservatives suggest the court's image has been tarnished only in the eyes of those who disagree with the court's action. They say the problem began with the Florida Supreme Court's decision to order statewide hand recounts.
''The Florida Supreme Court thrust the judicial system very far into the political thicket,'' Daniel Polsby, a law professor at George Mason University, told the Associated Press.
The partisan feuding over the election, already at a feverish level, continued even after the issue entered the ideally nonpartisan arena of the judiciary.
Republicans bitterly attacked the Florida Supreme Court - all seven members were appointed by Democratic governors - when the jurists ruled last month that recounts could go on in certain counties, and then last week ordered still further recounts. Some GOP officials accused the court of ''judicial activism,'' manipulating the law to achieve a certain result.
Now it is the Democrats who are disappointed and astonished by the judiciary, following the US Supreme Court's order that helps Republican George W. Bush. Seven of the nine justices were appointed by Republican presidents, and two were given their jobs by Bush's father, former president George Bush.
''This is very bad for the Supreme Court because their credibility is so diminished and their moral posture is so diminished that it could take years to pull back from that,'' said Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont.
House minority leader Richard A. Gephardt, Democrat of Missouri, publicly disagreed with his colleague, but accused the GOP of employing the same tactics.
''I don't think we get anywhere by impugning the motives of any court in this process - you know, Republicans who are criticizing the Texas Supreme Court or the Florida Supreme Court a few days ago,'' Gephardt said on a CNN news program yesterday. ''We've got to maintain the rule of law in this country. We've got to let the rule-of-law process run itself through and get to a result.''
In previous major cases, the court has been politically inoculated by unanimity. In the 1954 decision Brown v. Board of Education, outlawing school segregation, the court spoke with one voice. Similarly, in the 1974 decision ordering former President Nixon to release damning audiotapes was unanimous, noted Philip Klinkner, a law professor at Hamilton College in upstate New York.
But the sharp division of the court on the case involving Bush and Vice President Al Gore - combined with the harsh disagreement voiced openly by the dissenting justices - could challenge the court's credibility, said Susan Low Bloch, a law professor at Georgetown University Law School.
But the integrity of the court must be respected for it to operate as intended, she said. ''I hope Bush and Gore and their spokesmen don't attack the court. We can't trash the court.''
Legal specialists see two justices - Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy - as the potential swing votes.
Bush's lawyers will need to convince the court that there is a federal question at issue: whether equal protection is being denied by a count of what the campaign sees as ''illegal'' ballots, law professors say.
The Gore team needs to contain the question to a matter of state statutes, arguing that Florida election law is rightly interpreted by the Florida Supreme Court, not a federal court.
The best chance either side has, Gerken said, is to find some middle ground, particularly a solution that allows the high court to avoid making a decision that effectively chooses the next president.
