On Tuesday, November 7, 2000, 100 million Americans went to the polls to elect a new president. By early the next morning it was clear Florida would determine the election. For without the state, neither candidate had the 270 Electoral College votes needed to claim the White House. Within days, attorneys for Texas Governor George W. Bush, the Republican Party's nominee, and Vice President Albert A. Gore, Jr, the Democratic Party's nominee, were battling each other in courtrooms stretching from Miami to Tallahassee. By the time the skirmishing ended five weeks later, dozens of lawsuits had been filed and an astonishing array of state and federal judges had weighed in on the dispute by issuing a series of ground-breaking opinions. In recognition of the worldwide significance of the 2000 United States presidential election, Kluwer Law International commissioned three Florida law professors to gather together the key judicial rulings generated by this remarkable test of participatory democracy.