In order to avoid holding the law unconstitutional, the court rewrote it from the bench, inserting safeguards that a panicky New Jersey State Legislature failed to include last year.

James A. Baker III, the head of the Bush campaign's forces in Florida, said that the court had "rewritten the election laws of Florida."

'If courts habitually rewrote statutes in order to effect supposed improvements, this might cause statutes to become more complex in order to exclude judicial rewriting in a way that was politically unacceptable.'

To suggest that the courts will ever completely rewrite a statute is a great exaggeration; and even judges who accept the literal rule in words will depart from it when the circumstances press them hard enough.

The court emphasised that it was upholding party autonomy and would not rewrite the contract to take account of subsequent concerns.

They wanted to know whether asking the courts to rewrite New York State's marriage laws was a way of letting the State Legislature escape responsibility for taking a position on a social controversy.

In the two years since Sept. 11, the Bush administration and the federal courts have rewritten important areas of the law, scaling back the right to counsel, the ability of prisoners to challenge their confinement and other civil liberties.

But make no mistake, the court rewrote the law.

The court rewrote the laws.

Make no mistake," he said in Austin, Tex. "The court rewrote the laws.