This week the U.S. Supreme Court has the chance to decide who'll pick the president. But in an election plagued by accusations of partisan tomfoolery and fraud, can even the nation's highest court be truly neutral? According to local scholars, the notion of nonpartisan justices is a media myth.

Friday, the federal Supreme Court will hear arguments challenging the Florida Supreme Court's Nov. 21 decision to allow manual recounts beyond the Republican secretary of state's deadline. Lawyers for George W. Bush argue that the state Supreme Court's decision altered a Florida election law after Election Day-a violation of federal election law. Lawyers for Al Gore contend the Florida Supreme Court merely interpreted existing state statute-after all, that's their job. Courtwatchers say the dispute arises from a contradiction in Florida election law, which allows for manual recounts but also empowers the secretary of state to disregard counts that are turned in after her deadline.

In essence, the U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to decide which branch of government has the legal power to determine the winner of the presidential race in Florida. The stakes don't get much higher than this.

Bush's team says the secretary of state has the authority to call the winner. In theory, the Supreme Court could uphold Katherine Harris' rejection of manual recounts, thereby ruining Gore's attempt to include recounts in his contest of the election.

The Gore camp argues that the Florida Supreme Court's job is to interpret state law, and that their ruling should stand. Since Gore's currently contesting the election certification in Florida's Leon County Circuit Court-and hoping that court will allow further recounts-a decision giving power to state courts to ensure every vote is counted would benefit him greatly.

But there's another player in this game: the Florida legislature. The heavily Republican legislature has already taken steps to appoint a slate of delegates to the Electoral College, essentially nullifying the will of the state's voters. In an amicus brief filed earlier this week, the Florida legislature asked the U.S. Supreme Court to confirm the state legislature's power to decide the election, as suggested by 19th-century federal election law. If the U.S. Supreme Court gives the nod to the state legislature, the cases currently in lower courts will be moot and the election will easily go to Bush.

Blind justices?

In a sense, then, the U.S. Supreme Court has the chance to decide the presidency. Amid an election debacle that's raised partisanship to new heights, many hope the Nine in Black will lend legitimacy to a presidency threatened by accusations of bias on every side. Decisions by the obviously partisan secretary of state, state legislature and state Supreme Court have been called into question for potential biases. But is the U.S. Supreme Court truly immune to the influence of partisan politics? Scholars say the "mythology" of the Court's impartiality is overwrought.

"The national media tends to romanticize the U.S. Supreme Court," says Robert Nagel, professor of law at CU-Boulder. "I don't think it's narrowly partisan, but there are certainly all sorts of political, social and institutional influences that it's subject to."

Nagel says cases in the Supreme Court are far more likely to be decided on ideological grounds than purely partisan biases. But though they may not decide most cases along party lines, the current justices must be deeply concerned with the election case. In a situation where a decision may determine the next president of the U.S., partisan considerations could play a cardinal role. After all, the next president of the United States will probably appoint one to four Supreme Court justices.

"I wouldn't call (the justices) 'partisan,' but to represent them as disinterested is not very realistic," Nagel says. "The next president is going to nominate people to the court. These justices naturally have an interest in who will be nominated to sit with them."

Both Gore and Bush have been outspoken about their ideal Supreme Court appointments-which are at opposing ends of the ideological spectrum. George W. Bush raised the hackles of liberals everywhere when he said his dream appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court would resemble Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas-two nerve-wrackingly right-wing men eager to impose their moral and political views on the court's decision regardless of judicial precedent. Gore supports more moderate justices, like Clinton appointee Ruth Bader Ginsberg or George Bush Sr.'s David Souter.

Sitting justices have a powerful interest in the appointees of the next few years. Who will be appointed to join me on the bench? Will my personal views be represented in a future court? Will I remain in the majority?

The temptation for justices to be swayed by partisan leanings must certainly be strong. Says CU political science Professor Vanessa Baird, "The way I see it, the Supreme Court is constrained by the law. But there's lots of discretion in applying that law. And where there's discretion, I think partisan or ideological biases will come through."

That's not to say it's likely the Supreme Court's ruling will be blatantly partisan. Both Baird and Nagel believe the Court depends upon the "mythology" of nonpartisanship to maintain its authority. As Nagel notes, "institutional self-interest" could prevent the Court from deciding along visibly partisan lines.

"Every member of the Court is concerned to protect the prestige and good name of the Court," Nagel explains. "You can't get more partisan than the election of the president, and every institution that has touched this issue gets accused of excessive or improper partisanship. So the other thing that could happen is the Court's reputation for being above partisan politics could itself suffer."

If the Court's impartiality falls into question, its perceived authority would be severely limited. And public perception, especially as supported by the national media, can determine the effectiveness of the Court's decisions.

"If the Supreme Court loses legitimacy among the public, people won't comply with their rulings," Baird observes. "One way to gain legitimacy is to have this legal mythology: It's just the law, and they're just deciding the law. The Supreme Court tends to frame decisions in legalistic terms, and because of that framing, people believe it."

Could a fear of appearing partisan convince the Supreme Court to defer to the Florida legislature? Nagel says the institutional self-interest cuts both ways. "When the Court steps in to resolve highly charged, sort of scary issues, of course the Court is taking a risk. But it also has the potential of gaining enormous prestige for its own position in society. This happened in U.S. v. Nixon, the famous Nixon tapes case. The Supreme Court stepped in, no doubt because justices felt they comprised the institution with the popular support and prestige to try to restabilize the government."

Does that prestige ensure we'll see an unbiased ruling? Nagel says the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling is impossible to predict. "I don't think (the case) is straightforward by any means: There's a lot of room for various extraneous factors to influence the justices, whether they are aware of it or not."

When protesters rocked Seattle last year to protest the meeting of the World Trade Organization, they did more than trash McDonald's and smash Starbucks. According to Carolyn Bninski of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, the protesters' powerful demonstrations resonated beyond the Space Needle city. "It kind of brought people together who had been working on different aspects of the same problem, which is the consolidation of corporate power, and the impact that's having on issues," Bninski said.

The Peace and Justice Center will hold a rally today to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Seattle protests. Bninski says the event is intended to bring together people who have a similar concern: the effects of globalization on labor and the environment-and the perpetuation of inequality worldwide. A group of experts will talk today, each addressing a different aspect of globalization.

The Center's Betty Ball will address the threat the World Trade Organization poses to the environment. Her assessment is bleak: "We could virtually lose the Earth with this going on." The WTO and environmental concerns often clash, because the international body's main goal is to make commerce easier, usually by ironing out differences in individual nations' laws. In practice, she explains, that means striking down pesky environmental regulations that constitute a "barrier to trade." Ball says a case in point is laws that force tuna fishermen to make their practice "dolphin safe." But thanks to the WTO, she says, those laws were struck down, because, the body ruled, they were a "barrier to trade."

Ball says the fight to preserve environmental protections is not a futile one: individuals can resist, and their resistance can mean something. "We can rise up and say, 'No more!' We don't want some secret organization usurping the power of our democratically elected officials. We didn't elect the WTO," she says. "We have virtually no access to them."

Thanks to last year's fight in Seattle, Ball thinks resistance to these nebulous institutions is gaining steam. "Before that happened, the number of people who even knew of the existence of the WTO, much less what it did, was so small," she says. "Within months, it became a conversational topic in the U.S. That's what it takes. We have to do dramatic things like these demonstrations. We have to keep on keeping on, get people educated and incensed about it."

The event begins at noon today at the Municipal Building on the corner of Broadway and Canyon. In the event of rain or inclement weather, participants will convene at the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, 1520 Euclid.