Now the courts find themselves where most Americans have been for more than a month -- bitterly divided over the rancorous political and legal battle being waged by Al Gore and George W. Bush for Florida's 25 electoral votes. Any hope that judges could confer a sense of legitimacy on the outcome is fading. We now know that the issue is just as divisive for them as it has been for ordinary citizens, and while the U.S. Supreme Court may have the final word on this presidential election, it could come at a high cost to the ultimate winner and to the credibility of our judicial system.

On Friday, a sharply divided Florida Supreme Court, in a stunning 4 to 3 decision, ordered a manual recount of ballots across the state that had not already been counted by hand. In one bold stroke, the state court suddenly revived Gore's chances of winning Florida at a late hour when the vice president was reportedly working on the concession speech even his own campaign aides expected he would be giving before the weekend. However, less than 24 hours after the Florida court handed down its decision, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a sharp 5 to 4 split, called a halt to the vote count and set an 11 a.m. hearing today for the Bush and Gore lawyers to present their oral arguments.

We had hoped the state and federal high courts, whatever they decided, would act with unanimity, as they did in their earlier rulings in this case. But that hope was shattered over the weekend, and now we must be prepared to accept something less than a harmonious resolution. Just as Republicans slandered Florida's courts when their rulings went against Bush, angry Democrats reacted to the U.S. Supreme Court's intervention with equally intemperate language. In Washington, the New York Times reported that some Democrats, speaking off the record, "denounced the justices as incompetents and worse, using language not often heard in the capital since the days when Southern lawmakers regularly denounced the court for its rulings on racial questions and called repeatedly for the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren."

The court-bashing must stop. The political and legal warfare raging in Florida already has done enough damage to the vital institutions of our democracy. The question increasingly is becoming not just which candidate ultimately wins but at what cost to the presidency and the nation.

After a month of twists and turns that made fools out of political commentators, we would not even attempt to predict how the nation's highest court will rule on the legal and constitutional challenge before it. But Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the court's most conservative members, hinted in a statement issued in response to Justice John Paul Stevens' bitter dissent that the majority may be sympathetic to Bush's position. Scalia said that it "suffices to say that the issuance of the stay suggests that a majority of the court, while not deciding the issues presented, believe the petitioner has a substantial probability of success."

The four dissenting justices argued -- and we agree -- that, because of the time factor, the recount should have been permitted to go forward while the court prepared to hear the case. But Scalia seemed to be speaking for the majority when he said, "Count first, and rule upon legality afterwards, is not a recipe for producing election results that the acceptance democratic stability requires."

Once again, Gore's lawyers are frantically working against the clock. With Tuesday the date for states to select the electors to the Electoral College, which will cast its votes for president on Dec. 18, Democrats worry that even a ruling in Gore's favor would come too late. A special session of Florida's Republican-controlled Legislature is preparing pick the state's electors early this week just in case. Republican leaders, in open defiance of the state Supreme Court, have made it clear they intend to choose a Bush slate, regardless of the results of a manual recount or what the courts say.

We have said all along that the best way to resolve the Florida voting dispute was to conduct a fair and full statewide recount under uniform standards for considering disputed ballots. And although the hour is late, we believe the aborted manual recount ordered by the Florida high court could have gone a long way toward making sure the next president, whoever he is, enters office without a cloud hanging over the legitimacy of his election.

In the event that a divided Supreme Court rules in Bush's favor, clearing a legal and constitutional path for him to become president-elect, the nation must be prepared to accept that outcome, however unsatisfying it would be to half the voters who cast ballots for the vice president. To do otherwise would risk doing further damage to the one institution in our democracy whose integrity and wisdom we look to above all others in a time of constitutional crisis. Someone has to have the last word, and better it be our highest court of law, imperfect as it may be, than the partisan warriors in Tallahassee and Washington.

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