Sides' Lack Of Diversity Draws Fire Other Lawyers Quickly Point To What They Don't See In Counsel For The Candidates: Women And Color.

It had been several hours since lawyers for Al Gore and George W. Bush made their arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, and Stanford law professor Deborah L. Rhode still had not cooled off.

She had been on a slow burn since Thursday, when she picked up a newspaper and saw pictures of several lawyers tapped for Friday's courtroom drama, the latest leg in the presidential race.

They were all men, she said. White men. Conspicuously missing, she said, was a picture of her own boss, Kathleen Sullivan, dean of Stanford's law school, who would have a seat at the counsel table for the Gore team - but not a voice that day in the nation's highest court.

"This is a reminder of progress yet to be made," Rhode said Friday afternoon. "It's certainly emblematic of the resilience of race and gender bias that all the heavy hitters for both these teams just happened to be white males."

And although a black lawyer, Jeffrey Robinson, argued another element of Gore's case in Leon County Circuit Court in Florida yesterday, that was no consolation for some who have noted with dismay a scarcity of minorities in this saga.

"This is history, and our history is going to be told without the inclusion of color on counsel's side of the table," said Andre Dennis, a prominent Philadelphia lawyer acclaimed for both his litigation work and advocacy for minority lawyers.

While not critical of those who participated in the Supreme Court argument Friday, who were considered among the nation's best in constitutional law, other lawyers, scholars and legal advocates interviewed over the weekend spoke of the irony of a diversity-deficient lineup of lawyers making a case to a Supreme Court that, while made up of a majority of white males, includes two female jurists and one African American.

Even the legions of legal commentators and television anchors that have been explaining the legal wrangling in Florida and Washington to election-woozy viewers have included a strong complement of women and minorities.

That they are not assuming a higher profile in either the Gore or Bush camps in the courtroom battles for the White House has become fodder for at least one late-night comedian. In his monologue Friday, Jay Leno described the Dream Teams for Gore and Bush as "guys with bad comb-overs" and quipped that even Hollywood, with shows like Ally McBeal and The Practice, has acknowledged the growing ranks of women and minority lawyers.

But few in the legal community are laughing.