In fairness to Judge Sauls, judges have to restrict their opinions to the legal matters brought before them, rather than decide what they think is "right" independent of the legal issues that are in dispute. Judges pay a great deal of attention to the structure of our democracy, and which decision-making power rests with which branch of government. If a judge were to go beyond his constitutional prerogatives and start trying to make decisions that are supposed to be made by the legislature, he could expect to be overturned on appeal. Judges are supposed to make decisions that they believe are able to withstand an appeal. I think this is what Judge Sauls was trying to do. He recognized that the legislature's job is to enact laws that will ensure the fairness of the process, so HIS job was to decide whether (a) these laws are constitutional, and (b) these laws were followed. Not whether he would have written different laws, or applied his discretion differently if he were in charge.

As I understand it, Florida law requires that the plaintiff in a case like this must establish that there is a likelihood that the revised totals after a recount will change the outcome of the election (I'm paraphrasing, obviously). These threshold questions are important, otherwise every dispute could be tied up in court indefinitely, based only on one party's willingness to continue the contest. The judge ruled that the plaintiff (Gore) had not met his threshold burden, and therefore the ruling would have to go against him. The good thing about Judge Saul's ruling is that it was clear and unambiguous, which will allow the Florida Supreme Court to consider the appeal in an expeditious manner.

In this and other cases, there are legitimate questions about whether judges can and should go beyond the narrow confines of the question they're confronted with, and examine the larger implications. This can cut both ways; we want judges to have the whole picture and issue rulings that make sense in light of all the facts, but we also want to be sure that we don't give judges so much discretion that they effectively usurp powers constitutionally granted to the other branches of government (which are elected, and therefore directly accountable to the voters). In order for our system of government to work right, the powers of the three branches have to be kept in some sort of balance. I think Judge Sauls had this very much in mind. Now we get to see whether the Florida Supreme Court thinks HE handled his discretion correctly.