The Rocky Mountain Collegian

Issue date: 4/20/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Craig Lassig - The Associated Press Al Franken talks with reporters, next to his wife Franni, after a court confirmed that Democrat Franken won the most votes in his 2008 Senate race against Republican Norm Coleman, outside his home in Minneapolis on Monday, April 13, 2009. The ruling isn't expected to be the final word because Coleman immediately announced plans to appeal to the state Supreme Court. (AP Photo/Craig Lassig)

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - Republican Norm Coleman's next and possibly last gambit for regaining his U.S. Senate seat will come before a Minnesota Supreme Court that seems built to his advantage: Five of the seven justices were put there by Republican governors.

But Coleman's edge with the court, which is expected to receive the appeal this week of his election-lawsuit loss to Democrat Al Franken, isn't all it seems.

Two of the GOP appointees will sit out the appeal because they helped referee the statewide recount. A third has drawn fire for past donations to Coleman's Senate campaigns.

And the court as a whole has a history of nonpartisanship in election-law decisions.

While courts nationwide are being increasingly drawn into political disputes, few elections reach this stage. Fewer still have such stakes: A six-year Senate term vital to the Washington power struggle.

"These aren't the kind of cases judges want to see come their way," said Michael Pitts, a professor at the Indiana University School of Law in Indianapolis. "It's tough to divorce what is a political judgment and what is a legal judgment."

Kathleen Blatz, a retired chief justice of the high court, said she's confident her former colleagues will reach a conclusion based on the law, not politics, in part because they know they're under a microscope.

"You are aware that what you do will be criticized," Blatz said.

In 2002, Blatz's Supreme Court had to decide how to treat absentee ballots when Sen. Paul Wellstone died in the campaign homestretch. The court quickly ruled absentee voters were entitled to replacement ballots by request, but not automatically. As a practical matter, that meant Wellstone voters who didn't act forfeited their Senate vote.

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