On one side are those who think we can know just how many votes each presidential candidate received in Florida, and know it on the very next recount, or maybe the recount after that. Then there are those of us who are willing to live with that uncertainty, but not with an uncertainty in the presidential succession. That is the least of it. The law in its best and broadest sense, the law as a teaching and light, must be concerned with more than law. It must take cognizance of the world from which it sprang and which it will shape, or misshape.
Elections involve the other branches of government.
That crisis already looms, as Florida's legislature meets and Congress waits in the wings. All sorts of mad scenarios are being sketched, including one in which Vice President Al Gore casts the deciding vote in the Senate on which set of electors to recognize. The crisis should never reach that surreal point. But it should never have been allowed to reach this point, either. And it wouldn't have, if Chief Justice Wells' warning had been heeded.