12/09/00 5:10 p.m.
Enough!
The Supreme Court ends the chaos.

By Mark R. Levin, president of Landmark Legal Foundation & Arthur F. Fergenson, attorney and former law clerk to Chief Justice Warren Burger

he United States Supreme Court, by a 5 to 4 majority, issued a stay order on Saturday evening, halting the Florida recount in its tracks. Just as Florida supreme court Chief Justice Charles Wells, in his dissent yesterday, warned the majority on his court, "... the majority's decision cannot withstand the scrutiny which will certainly immediately follow under the United States Constitution."

Although the majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, in issuing its stay, did not technically rule on the merits of the case (as Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in his concurrence), the five justices believe that George W. Bush has a substantial probability of success before the High Court. Because the stay makes it almost impossible for the recount to be finished and certification to be achieved by midnight Tuesday, December 12th — the federal statutory deadline for the appointment of electors to the Electoral College — the U.S. Supreme Court's majority must be resolved to decide the case ultimately in Bush's favor. Otherwise, it will risk the Court's own legitimacy. The reason is that if hears the case, and then lifts the stay to permit the recount, there is not enough time to complete it. The Court would look absurd. No justice in the majority would want to put the U.S. Supreme Court at such risk. Unless one of the justices in the majority is willing to harm the very institution in which he/she sits, the legal nightmare in Florida should soon be over.