The U.S. Supreme Court, set to hear arguments Friday on whether Florida's highest court had a right to extend a deadline for manual ballot recounts, has tended to value finality but also to defer to state courts' administration of state law, according to a University of California, Davis, law professor. John Oakley, an expert on constitutional law and on relations between federal and state courts, says that's "half a loaf" for both Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore. With the late Charles Alan Wright, Oakley wrote "Federal Courts: Cases and Materials" (The Foundation Press, 10th ed. 1999). Also, he is the reporter for the American Law Institute's Federal Judicial Code Revision Project. Contact: John Oakley, wk (530) 752-2895, hm (530) 758-3466, jboakley@ucdavis.edu. (Not available Dec. 5-15.)