PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION is best decided outside a courtroom, but the justices of the Florida Supreme Court demonstrated yesterday that, if it comes to a legal battle, theirs is the venue where it should be fought. Based on the justices' incisive questioning yesterday, they seemed well able to set ground rules that will allow hand recounts to proceed while leaving time for the Florida presidential electors to be chosen.

Hearing an appeal brought by Vice President Gore, the justices were deciding how to interpret Florida elections laws that were designed to deal with local or statewide contests, not a presidential election. In their questioning of lawyers for Gore and Governor George W. Bush, the justices were trying to determine how to square the law's insistence that counties file their final returns seven days after the elections with the provisions that candidates are allowed to request manual recounts. In populous counties, these can take longer than a week. This would not matter in a local election, where the courts can make decisions at a measured pace.

But in the presidential election, the state is up against a Dec. 12 deadline for certifying the electors, who cast their votes for president on Dec. 18. If the legal challenges by both parties to the Florida votes were allowed to drag on, this selection of electors might be jeopardized.

The justices were acutely aware of this deadline yesterday, as shown by their questioning. But they also acknowledged a candidate's right to call for hand recounts, as Gore has done in three of the state's biggest counties. The justices seem to be trying to find a way between these two realities.

They are not being helped by the corrosive partisanship of the Bush and Gore camps. The governor's lawyers hinted yesterday that if the Florida court goes against them, they will argue in federal court that all the people not being hand-counted throughout the state are being disenfranchised, even though Bush has rejected Gore's offer of a statewide hand tally. How this would affect the Electoral College deadline is anyone's guess.

Gore's people, in a quieter way, also took steps to prevent a civil resolution of this controversy. Their decision to contest military ballots without postmarks flew in the face of their insistence that every vote be counted. Fortunately, Gore's ally, Attorney General Bob Butterworth, urged the counties to accept the ballots yesterday.

The justices will have to thread carefully through this partisan thicket. Their questions yesterday were a refreshing contrast to the propaganda barrages of both campaigns over the past 13 days. Their ruling, which ought to be handed down very quickly, holds the promise of bringing legal order and prompt resolution to the 2000 presidential election.