The DUP has said it will continue its fight to ensure Assembly elections are held in the North and there is then an opportunity to renegotiate the Belfast Agreement.
The party's deputy leader, Mr Peter Robinson, said he was delighted that Belfast High Court yesterday granted the DUP leave to apply for a judicial review of the decision of the Northern Secretary, Dr John Reid, not to hold an election until May 2003.
"It is clear the court believes we have an arguable case and will fully hear it in a few weeks' time", Mr Robinson said.
"We believe this judgment vindicates our decision to take the case and allows a matter of such fundamental importance to be determined.
"The party will continue to fight to ensure the people of Northern Ireland have the elections and the opportunity to renegotiate the Belfast Agreement they deserve."
Mr Robinson said he believed there was sufficient legal precedence that the discretion of Dr Reid on the setting of an election date did not run as far as May 2003, and one should be called within a "reasonable period of time".
He said there were other issues the DUP was investigating which might prompt a further return to the courts. He believed the redesignation of parties as unionist to help get the required support for the UUP leader, Mr David Trimble, was invalid.
"Then we had the invalid election of First and Deputy First Ministers, who I regard to be impostors at the present time, because they were elected after the six-week period had expired."
The DUP leader, the Rev Ian Paisley, said the ruling proved his party had been right to go to the court.
"It shows what we have been saying all along has validity and there is a case to be answered and the Secretary of State has to answer that case", Dr Paisley said.
"We have won, we came to do a job and we got the job done. Now we must move forward and move forward very quickly."
However, Sinn FΘin urged the DUP to stop attempting to stall the political process and "come clean" to the public and admit that it was "playing a central role" in the process.
A Sinn FΘin Assembly member, Mr Conor Murphy, said the political institutions at Stormont were up and running and the First and Deputy First Ministers were in place.
"What is also very clear is the central role which the DUP play in all of this", he said.
"They work alongside ourselves and all of the other parties on the Assembly committees and they play a full role in the Assembly itself."
Mr Murphy said that the DUP should end its policy of "semi-detached ministers" and take up its full role on the Executive.
Mr Martin McGuinness, of Sinn FΘin, said that the anti-agreement unionists had failed this week, and would continue to fail, in their attempts to destroy the Belfast Agreement.
The North's political institutions had survived because unionists, nationalists, republicans and others had "combined to defeat the efforts of the wreckers".
He added: "In that unity of purpose there is great hope for the future. There is the hope we can build a future based on equality, diversity, inclusivity, human rights and economic prosperity."
Mr McGuinness was speaking at the Aisling Awards in Belfast, organised by the Andersonstown News, at which two New York fire-fighters were honoured. Meanwhile, Mr Trimble has been named as the "Zurich/Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year".
The UUP chairman, Mr James Cooper, said: "David has earned himself a place as one of the great statesmen from Ireland in the last 200 years."