Millions of Americans kissed the ground and tearfully thanked the US Supreme Court last week. With one hastily-assembled, almost unreadable 65-page document, its nine justices were able to kill an election that simply refused to die.
It is true that if the court had failed to end it, the legal fight over recounts could have driven the nation into a crisis with no foreseeable end. In the interest of everyone, they finally brought about finality.
But at what cost to their revered institution? The Supreme Court is assigned a higher task of upholding the rule of law, in the face of, and in spite of, politics.
Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas invoked that idea again on Wednesday when he told a group of visiting students: "The last political act we engage in is [Senate] confirmation. Whatever you do, don't try to apply the rules of the political world to this institution; they do not apply."
However, many long-time students of the court are wondering whether that is true. Would the justices have ruled 5-4 along the same ideological lines if the two candidates switched places, if George W. Bush were the one fighting for his political survival?
"I never wanted to say this, but I don't think so. I think the court wouldn't have even intervened if that were the case," said Prof Suzanna Sherry of Vanderbilt Law School in Tennessee.
"It's very hard to explain this opinion with a strictly legal mind. Their reasoning goes against most of their own judicial philosophies. The only possible explanation is that they wanted Bush to win."
The current Supreme Court is well known for its insistence that federal bodies should stay out of the state's business, that judges should not actively be changing laws meant for the legislatures, and that the justices should interpret the constitution very literally, "and not make it up as they go along," Prof Sherry said.
"But on all these counts, they contradicted what they usually do," agreed Mr Michael Gerhardt, a constitutional law specialist at the College of William and Mary in Virginia.
The majority essentially said that the vague and confusing standards currently in place for recounting votes across Florida violated the equal protection clause of the US constitution, and there was no time left to create a uniform state-wide method that would treat each vote fairly.
This is an unprecedented new direction for the court, possibly opening up thousands of lawsuits by voters all over the country who have to use punchcards while wealthier neighbourhoods have optical scanners. But the justices said their decision applies to this case only.
And then the court temporarily halted the recount twice before making that decisive conclusion, "which makes it look like they let the clock run out while holding on to the ball and not letting Gore finish the game," said Stanford University Law School Dean Kathleen Sullivan.
"The Supreme Court looked extremely political here," she concluded. "In the long run, the court will regain the respect of the public. But the justices dealt themselves a deep wound, and their image will be tarnished for a while."
It does not help matters that all the conservative justices voted for the conservative candidate, and all the liberal justices voted against him. It looks even worse that one of the justices has a son working for a law firm representing Mr Bush, and the wife of another Justice is working on his transition team.
"The Supreme Court's judgment may have been correct, but the impression of bias alone is too damaging. That's why this should have been fought out in Congress, a political body," Mr Gerhardt said. "It might have gotten ugly, but at least it would have been democratic."
In the court's confusing opinion on Tuesday night, there was considerable evidence that the justices tried mightily to achieve some consensus and remain above the fray. But they were unable.
During those intense negotiations, though, they did manage to assemble a respectable 6-3 majority in favour of a Chinese take-out, commentators joked. In an election like this one, that's about as much as we could have hoped for.
Tom McCann is a US journalism student on secondment to The Irish Times