ASHINGTON - Before President Bush or President Gore gets to fulfill a campaign promise and replace one or more of the Supreme Court's justices, the court has a little surprise: It's still got the spunk and vigor to land a punch in their election fight.
This morning at 10 sharp, when the marshal bangs the gavel and announces the formal entrance of the nine somber, black-robed justices with the cry of ''Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!'' the intimate, splendid chamber of the US Supreme Court becomes the central combat zone of the 2000 presidential contest.
In its most politically charged case since 1974, when the Court under Warren E. Burger unanimously decided that President Nixon had to turn over the Watergate tapes, the court could make history by ruling that Florida's manual recount of some ballots is null and void or that a state legislature cannot, under the Constitution, appoint a slate of presidential electors.
As usual, no one knows how quickly or broadly the high court will rule; the justices could wait and watch the developments still unfolding in Florida's capital. But simply by agreeing to hear arguments in the case of Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, the Supreme Court has injected itself into politics and the spotlight, two arenas it usually avoids.
''As it entered this political thicket, the court must have thought about the risks to its prestige of appearing partisan,'' said Eugene Volokh , a UCLA law professor and former clerk of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. ''The justices concluded that their institutional obligation to interpret the Constitution and discharge of the matter outweighed the risks.''
There were other concerns, too, for the branch of the federal government that prizes its privacy and values its dignity. Not the least among them was controlling any protests on the marble courtyard outside, giving access to the throng of observers who want to get inside, and managing the media frenzy that surrounds the election story.
It denied requests to televise today's hearing; Justice David Souter once said the only way cameras would come into his courtroom was ''to roll over my dead body.'' But remarkably, the justices, with a median age of 66 and 131 cumulative years of service on this bench, looked beyond the quill pens on the counsel tables and agreed to make today's proceedings immediately available via audiotape and on the court's new Web page.
''It really is extraordinary, and a serious step in the right direction,'' said Jerry Goldman, a Northwestern University political scientist. ''The court is no longer the caboose in this information age.''
The court is making a special allowance in this case by giving each side 45 minutes to make its oral arguments, 15 minutes more than usual.
Lawyers for Texas Governor George W. Bush, who brought the case, will have exactly 35 minutes to persuade the justices that the Florida Supreme Court erred in extending the deadline for certifying the state's votes. Bush led Gore by 930 votes on Nov. 18, the original deadline that Secretary of State Katherine Harris tried to enforce. Harris's lawyer, Joseph Klock, Jr., will have the other 10 minutes to address the court.
Lawyers for Vice President Al Gore will use 35 minutes of its time to argue that the Florida court acted within its judicial authority to intepret state law and allow more time for a manual recount of ballots. With the new Nov. 26 deadline, Gore gained votes, cutting Bush's statewide lead to 537.
Yesterday, in a brief to the high court, Gore's lawyers asked the justices to rule that Florida legislators cannot appoint a slate of electors for the Electoral College, as some Republicans have threatened to do if Gore pulls ahead in the popular vote. Gore's team is giving Paul Hancock, Florida's deputy attorney general, the final 10 minutes to make that case.
But Theodore Olson, Bush's lead lawyer, and Laurence Tribe, Gore's top advocate, have stood before this court often enough to know they will be lucky to finish their first sentence before Justice Antonin Scalia breaks in with a caustic comment, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg counters with a jab of her own, Justice Stephen H. Breyer poses a long, professorial question, O'Connor interjects a note of incredulity, or Souter quietly gets right to the point.
''Scalia and Ginsburg are the two most active and persistent questioners, sort of the court's version of `Crossfire,' and I would expect them to set the tone,'' said Peter Irons, author of ''A People's History of the Supreme Court.''
Veteran court observers will be listening to the justices' questions for clues to the outcome. Will the usual coalition that defends states' rights - Scalia, O'Connor, Justices Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy and Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist - buy Gore's argument, that the federal courts should not meddle in state matters? Or will these same conservatives sound more disposed toward Bush, whose ideology may be closer to their own?
It's impossible to divorce the Supreme Court from politics. Seven of the nine justices were appointed by Republican presidents. Two, Souter and Thomas, were elevated to the court by Bush's father. George W. Bush frequently cites Scalia and Thomas as role models for the kind of strict constructionist justices that as president he would appoint. Ginsburg and Breyer were nominated by President Clinton.
But you don't have to look beyond the liberal Justice John Paul Stevens, who was appointed by President Ford, or Souter, whose center-left opinions have been a great disappointment to conservative Republicans, to know that partisanship doesn't rule at the Supreme Court.
''To even suggest that they are motivated by politics does a great disservice to justices who take their jobs very seriously,'' said Joshua Rosenkranz, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School and a former clerk to Scalia.
Many scholars believe the court already may be well on its way to deciding the case, based on the briefs that have circulated and been studied and the legal analyses the law clerks have prepared. A general rule, say lawyers who argue before the Supreme Court, is that cases aren't won by a great oral argument, but they can be lost by a poor one.
Both Tribe, a Harvard law professor, and Olson, a partner in the national firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, are Supreme Court veterans.
''They don't just know the law of the case, the law remotely related to the case, and everything these justices have ever said or written that could be associated with this case,'' said Stephen Wermiel, who teaches a course on the Supreme Court at American University's Washington College of Law. ''They also know their bench habits, their style, their mannerisms, and who is going to ask what questions.''
If the court follows its standard practice, the justices will go into conference immediately after the arguments and, without discussion, vote on how to rule. The senior justice in the majority will either write the opinion himself or assign it to another justice. Once written, the opinion will circulate, be refined, and be released, perhaps with dissents.
Normally, this process takes from seven weeks to seven months. But under pressure, the court can move very quickly. In 1971, the court decided in four days that the Nixon administration could not bar the New York Times and Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers. In the Watergate tapes case, the court reached a unanimous ruling against Nixon in two weeks.
Some speculate that the justices will seek unanimity because of the significance of this case. But speed may be more critical than speaking with one voice.
''Some of the justices may want it to percolate until they can reach a unanimous opinion,'' said Michael Young, dean of George Washington University Law School and a former Rehnquist law clerk. ''Rehnquist's view, I believe, will be that it's more important to get it done right and in a timely fashion.''
