An election under fire. Punch-card ballots with chads. A Supreme Court poised to intervene.

Beginning to sound familiar?

More than three years after the U.S. Supreme Court elbowed its way into the presidential election, California's high court heads for one of the biggest political maelstroms in state history as a flurry of legal petitions asks the justices to undermine the recall campaign against Gov. Gray Davis.

And while the times, the players and the issues are different, the state Supreme Court's potential role in determining the next governor of California raises many of the same concerns that tainted the U.S. Supreme Court's reputation for political independence in 2000.

Foremost among them is whether the court, still shadowed by the ouster of Chief Justice Rose Bird and two other liberal justices 17 years ago, should insert itself into such hotly partisan battles. Although the justices have crafted a record of independence and evenhanded justice in recent years, their political provenance -- six of the seven were appointed by Republican governors -- may inevitably cast suspicion on whatever decisions they reach.

"Courts are put into a double bind by these types of cases," said Gerald Uelmen, a professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law. "They may provide the only opportunity to decide an issue and to avoid complete chaos, but there's a reluctance to inject a very vulnerable branch of government into the hurly burly of politics."

In recent weeks, Davis' supporters have asked the court to change the recall rules in ways that might improve the governor's -- or at least the Democratic Party's -- chances of retaining the governorship.

The five petitions filed with the court so far take a variety of approaches.

Two would allow Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, a Democrat, to replace Davis automatically if the recall is successful.

Another would make sure Davis' name is among the list of successor candidates, should the public vote to oust him.

And two other petitions would postpone the election until March, giving recall opponents more time to organize.

Some of the issues involve the U.S. Constitution and could even be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

An argument for postponement, for example, is that several counties need time to adopt ballots more reliable than the punch cards that, with their "hanging chads," caused a constitutional controversy in the 2000 presidential election.

The state Supreme Court has not yet agreed to hear any of the petitions, and several legal experts said that it should avoid at least some of them.

They argue that the U.S. Supreme Court faced its harshest criticism in 2000 for agreeing to hear the Florida vote-counting disputes rather than leaving the issues to the Florida Supreme Court and letting the election take its course.

Likewise, they said, the California Supreme Court has a way out on the recall issues. The California Constitution grants the Commission on the Governorship -- which includes the Senate president pro tem and the Assembly speaker among its five members -- the exclusive right to raise with the court questions of a vacancy in the governorship.

Whether Bustamante should succeed Davis and whether the governor should be among the list of candidates involve such questions, said Professor Vikram Amar of UC's Hastings College of the Law, and the justices should require the commission to address them.

Authors of the provision "didn't want the California Supreme Court to weigh in without a political vetting," he said.

But Jerome Falk, a San Francisco attorney advocating succession by the lieutenant governor, said the provision doesn't apply, because it was designed merely to stop nuisance suits rather than to prevent constitutional litigation.

In any event, while Uelmen would counsel the court "to display real reluctance to jump in," he and others are confident that the justices will keep themselves above any political considerations.

"It's part of this court's job to referee state politics," said Stephen Barnett, professor emeritus at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law.

But how the justices would rule on these petitions is far less certain.

The California Supreme Court has often dealt with issues, such as the boundaries of legislative districts, that ultimately determine the outcome of elections. It has also addressed the politically charged question of whether voter-approved initiatives are valid -- and has sometimes paid a high price for its rulings.

In 1992, for example, the Republican-dominated court upheld Proposition 140,

the initiative that imposed term limits on legislators and cut their budget by 38 percent. Democratic legislators accused the justices of playing politics and, in response, recommended a 34 percent cut in the court's budget.

"But these (recall) issues are so unprecedented for this court," explains University of Southern California law professor Erwin Chemerinsky, "that it's very difficult to predict what they'll do."

Generally, the court is considered moderate to conservative in ideology, and a far cry from its controversial predecessors.

Under Chief Justice Bird, for example, the court's liberal politics -- and particularly its routine reversal of death sentences -- provoked California voters to remove Bird and Justices Joseph Grodin and Cruz Reynoso from office in 1986.

Of the justices on the current court, Republicans Joyce Kennard and Kathryn Mickle Werdegar are viewed as the most liberal. Carlos Moreno, appointed by Davis in 2001 as the court's only Democrat, is also considered moderate to liberal, although he has served too briefly to have much of a track record.

On the other end of the ideological spectrum are Marvin Baxter, Ming Chin, Chief Justice Ronald George and Janice Rogers Brown.

Brown is also considered a maverick, a frequent dissenter whose skepticism of government power may have endeared her to the Bush administration, which nominated her for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.

Barnett sees Brown as a possible swing vote in favor of letting the recall election proceed unaltered, though he readily acknowledges that the justices' ideological positions may tell us little about their views of the recall.

"This is not really a liberal or conservative issue," he said.

Ultimately, though, George may be the justice to watch.

In what Barnett calls "high political cases" -- suits involving the Legislature or sensitive political or electoral issues -- Chin, Baxter and Werdegar have often followed George's lead.

One reason may be that, as chief justice, George must deal with the Legislature on court-budget issues and so he understands the political dynamics.

"Having come through the state judicial system, he is a natural politician and conciliator," said Barnett.

According to Barnett and others, this means that the court may favor trying to accommodate all interests, a ruling that would preserve the letter of the law by, for example, leaving the ballot untouched but would minimize confusion by, for example, postponing the election until March.

Whatever the court decides, though, Amar is not optimistic that it will come through the process unscathed.

"The biggest lesson here," he said, "is that litigation under fire is not a good way to litigate. We saw that in the 2000 presidential election, and we're seeing it again now."

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Who's who on state's top court
A brief look at the California Supreme Court's seven justices:

Marvin Baxter

Age: 63

Appointed: In 1991 by Republican Gov. George Deukmejian.

Previous experience: He was Deukmejian's judicial appointments secretary before Deukmejian appointed him in 1988 to the state Court of Appeal in Fresno,

where he had practiced law for 16 years.

Position on issues: A consistent conservative, he wrote an April 2002 ruling upholding the Davis administration's attempt to keep serial rapist Patrick Ghilotti confined in a mental hospital, and a 1993 ruling restricting individuals' ability to sue for fear of cancer caused by toxic pollution.

Janice Rogers Brown

Age: 54

Appointed: In 1996 by Republican Gov. Pete Wilson.

Previous experience: The first black woman in the court's history, she served as Wilson's legal affairs secretary and as a state deputy attorney general before he appointed her to the state Court of Appeal in Sacramento in 1994.

Position on issues:

A frequent dissenter who usually lines up with Baxter on the court's conservative wing, she wrote a ruling in 2000 interpreting Proposition 209, the voter-approved initiative that bans preferential treatment for women and minorities in public contracts, hiring and college admissions. She was nominated by President Bush last month to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.

Ming Chin

Age: 60

Appointed: In 1996 by Wilson.

Previous experience: Chin served 15 years as a business lawyer in Oakland and then two years as a prosecutor before Deukmejian named him to the Alameda County Superior Court in 1988. Two years later, Chin was named to the state Court of Appeal in San Francisco.

Position on issues: Generally conservative, Chin wrote the ruling in 2001 barring damage suits against assault weapons manufacturers whose firearms were used in a mass killing, but dissented from a ruling last December that gave Gov. Gray Davis broad authority to block the parole of convicted murderers.

Chief Justice

Ronald George

Age: 63

Appointed: In 1991 by Wilson, promoted to chief justice by Wilson in 1996.

Previous experience: George had spent the previous 19 years as a trial judge and appellate justice in Los Angeles after seven years in the state attorney general's office.

Position on issues: Considered politically conservative but judicially moderate, George wrote the majority ruling in the court's last major political case, a 1999 decision striking from the ballot a Republican-sponsored initiative that would have cut legislative pay and turned reapportionment over to the courts. His 1996 ruling striking down the state's parental consent law for minors' abortions prompted anti-abortion groups to campaign, unsuccessfully, against both George and Chin in that year's elections.

Joyce Kennard

Age: 62

Appointed: In 1989 by Deukmejian, who had previously named her to the trial and appellate courts in Los Angeles.

Previous experience: She spent four years in the state attorney general's office and seven years as a research attorney for the appellate court.

Position on issues: Unpredictable and fiercely independent, she wrote a ruling last year allowing a San Francisco man to sue Nike for allegedly false statements in a public relations campaign defending conditions in its contractors' Asian factories.

Carlos Moreno

Age: 54

Appointed: In 2001 by Davis. Moreno is the court's only Democrat.

Previous experience: He had been named to the federal court in Los Angeles by President Bill Clinton in 1998, and previously to state trial courts by Govs. Deukmejian and Wilson after four years as a city prosecutor and seven years as a business lawyer in Los Angeles.

Position on issues: Considered moderate to liberal, he wrote a ruling last year allowing local governments to adopt gun restrictions that are stricter than state law, and dissented from the ruling blocking Ghilotti's release, disagreeing with Davis' position.

Kathryn Mickle Werdegar

Age: 67

Appointed: In 1994 by Wilson, her former law school classmate who had named her to the state Court of Appeal in San Francisco three years earlier.

Previous experience: She had spent 10 years as an attorney with the appellate court.

Position on issues: A centrist, she wrote rulings in 1996 that allowed judges to spare some repeat felons from life sentences under the "three strikes" law, and barred a landlady from refusing to rent to an unmarried couple for religious reasons.