Transcript: Remarks by Gore attorney Laurence Tribe after filing briefs with U.S. Supreme Court

Here is a transcript of remarks by Gore campaign attorney Laurence Tribe on Tuesday following the filing of documents with the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington:

QUESTION: Did you make the 4 o'clock deadline?

TRIBE: Yes, we did. We just filed a brief on behalf of Vice President Gore electronically, and within about 1 1/2 minutes we'll be filing the hard copies.

We believe that the court was interested in hearing this case for obvious reasons, although we can never know all its reasons, and we believe that we have made a very compelling argument as to why the decision of the Florida courts not to treat elections as some kind of game in which one side can say, "Got you. You didn't quite make the deadline," but instead to try to count every lawfully cast ballot is a perfectly lawful decision, consistent with everything in the Constitution and laws of the United States. And the more we researched the arguments that the lawyers on behalf of Governor Bush are making, the more we became convinced that they were distorting the language and the history of all of the provisions that they are relying upon.

I can give you one simple example. They're placing heavy reliance on a law that Congress passed in the 19th century to deal with the problem of contests in Congress between competing groups of electors, a problem that arose during the Hayes-Tilden controversy. That law provides a safe harbor for states. It basically tells them that if they can get their act together by December 12 and make a clear choice, then that choice will be conclusive in Congress. But if they don't quite make it, then there may be conflict.

And the Bush campaign has distorted that law which is designed to give an option to the states into some kind of straitjacket for the states, requiring them to proceed on the basis of legislation without the benefit of judicial interpretation to solve the problems the legislation poses. We conclude in the brief that we have just filed on behalf of the vice president that there is really no legal basis whatsoever for the governor's claims -- the claims of Governor Bush that either considerations of fairness or considerations of federalism or the laws of Congress require any interference with what the courts of Florida have done.

QUESTION: But what Article 2, sir? The Republicans claim that it very clearly specifies that it's the legislatures in the state that determine. It's not the court; separation of powers.

TRIBE: That's right. That's one of the flimsier arguments that the governor makes. It may pass the laugh test, but then when you look at it, it turns out that what the Constitution says in Article 2, is simply that the states must rely on their legislative process, their legislature, to lay down the rules by which electors are chosen. But there is no suggestion that in that area, unlike every other, the laws somehow are not subject to judicial interpretation to resolve ambiguities and to eliminate conflicts.