时代周刊:终审法院(2)（在线收听）

The Biden campaign's legal team has been sanguine about the deluge to come. "Let me tell you this: if you go to the Supreme Court today, drive around the building, you will not see Donald Trump, and you will not see his lawyers," says Bob Bauer, former White House counsel under Barack Obama and a senior adviser to the Biden campaign. "He's not going to the Supreme Court of the United States to get the voting to stop."

拜登竞选团队的法律团队对即将到来的“洪水”持乐观态度。鲍勃·鲍尔曾是巴拉克·奥巴马政府的白宫顾问，也是拜登竞选团队的高级顾问，他说：“让我来告诉你：如果你今天去最高法院，开车绕着大楼转，你不会看到唐纳德·特朗普，也不会看到他的律师，他是不会去美国最高法院阻止投票的。”

But at least some top Republicans, including Tom Spencer, who worked for George W. Bush in Bush v. Gore, the case that decided the 2000 election, foresee the legal wrangling ending at the court, where Trump has appointed three of the nine Justices. He predicts that the outcome may hinge on three Justices—Brett Kavanaugh, John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett—all of whom, like Spencer, worked on Bush's team two decades ago. In September, Trump said he wanted Barrett installed on the high court before the election to ensure a full bench to decide election disputes. "The big issue of course is how is Justice Barrett going to rule," Spencer says.

但至少有一些共和党高层会去，包括曾在布什诉戈尔一案中(决定了2000年的大选结果)为乔治·W·布什工作过的汤姆·斯宾塞。他预测法律纠纷将在最高法院结束，特朗普已经任命了9名大法官中的3名，结果可能取决于三位法官——布雷特·卡瓦诺、约翰·罗伯茨和艾米·科尼·巴雷特——他们都和斯宾塞一样，在20年前为布什的团队工作过。今年9月，特朗普表示希望在选举前在高等法院任命巴雷特，以此确保能够有一个完整的法官席来裁决选举纠纷。“当然，最大的问题是巴雷特法官将如何裁决，”斯宾塞说。

The consequences of the coming legal battles may extend beyond who becomes the next President of the United States. The litiation could test Americans' confidence in the electoral process, shake their faith in the judiciary as an impartial arbiter of U.S. law, and further divide an already polarized nation. "Make no mistake: our democracy is being tested in this election," Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf said Nov. 4. "This is a stress test of the ideals upon which this country was founded."

即将到来的法律之战的后果可能会超出“谁将成为美国下一任总统”这一问题。这场诉讼可能会考验美国人对选举过程的信心，动摇他们对司法机构作为美国法律公正仲裁者的信心，并进一步分化这个已经两极分化的国家。宾夕法尼亚州州长汤姆·沃尔夫11月4日说：“毫无疑问，我们的民主正在这次选举中遭受考验，这是对美国建国理想的一次压力测试。”

Lawyers for both the Trump and Biden campaigns have been preparing for this moment for months. With backing from deep-pocketed donors, as well as the Republican and Democratic National Committees, each has amassed an army of top-tier lawyers and legal experts who have been deployed at strategic outposts around the country. In the months before the election, lawyers for various Democratic and Republican entities filed more than 400 election-related lawsuits, putting the 2020 race on track to be the most litigated in history.

特朗普和拜登的竞选律师已经为这一时刻准备了数月。在财力雄厚的捐助者以及共和党和民主党全国委员会的支持下，两党都积累了一支由顶级律师和法律专家组成的队伍，他们被部署在全国各地的战略前站。在大选前的几个月里，民主党和共和党各机构的律师提起了400多起与选举有关的诉讼，使2020年大选有望成为历史上诉讼最多的一次大选。

Some of these decisions may have made a post–Election Day showdown more likely by narrowing the margin between Biden and Trump. On Oct. 26, the Supreme Court upheld Wisconsin's ballot-receipt deadline. Appeals courts similarly ruled in favor of shorter ballot-receipt deadlines in Georgia and Michigan. The Supreme Court decision in the Wisconsin case "unquestionably" made the margin closer, says Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in the state. "There are probably thousands of absentee ballots that will be (arriving) in the next few days." When the deadline was extended during Wisconsin's primary this year, the state's election commission said it resulted in an additional 79,000 ballots being counted.

其中一些决定可能会缩小拜登和特朗普之间的差距，从而更有可能导致大选后的摊牌。10月26日，最高法院维持了威斯康辛州的收票截止日期。乔治亚州和密歇根州的上诉法院也做出了类似的裁决，支持缩短收到选票的最后期限。威斯康星州“共同事业”的执行董事杰伊·赫克表示，最高法院在威斯康辛州一案中的判决“毫无疑问”拉近了差距。“未来几天可能会有数千张缺席选票送到。”今年威斯康辛州的初选延长了最后期限，该州选举委员会表示，这导致多出了79000张需要清点的选票。