The Supreme Court decision that decided the 2000 Presidential Election should go down in history as one of the court's most ill-conceived judgments. In issuing its poorly-reasoned ruling in Bush v. Gore, the court majority unnecessarily exposed itself to charges of partisanship and risked undermining the court's stature as an independent, impartial arbiter of the law. Although the court majority correctly identified constitutional problems in the specific recount proceedings ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, the decision to end all recount attempts did immeasurable damage to the equal protection rights the court claimed to be guarding, since it favored a convenient and timely tabulation of ballots over an accurate recording of the vote. In the controversy that followed this decision, some critics of the majority decision argued that the court had no business taking on Bush v. Gore in the first place, that it should have remained solely within the Florida courts (Ginsburg, J. [Dissent] Bush v. Gore [2000]). This paper will argue that the court was correct to intervene but that umm the resulting decision was flawed and inconsistent, with potentially serious, adverse implications for the Federal judiciary if the court continues to issue rulings in this way.

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3 years ago