The justices' move avoids a contentious issue on the eve of a widely speculated vacancy on the court. If they had intervened, it would have set up a constitutional showdown over White House powers at a time when ailing Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist is considered a strong prospect to step down this term.
The Constitution gives presidents authority to fill vacancies for a year or two during a Senate recess. At issue was whether a recess means whenever the Senate is not meeting such as during short intrasession break or only during the Senate's annual adjournment at year's end.
In a statement accompanying the cert denial, Justice John Paul Stevens emphasized the court did not necessarily reject the case because the appeal lacked merit. He suggested justices might be interested in hearing the case later when the appeals have run their full course in the lower courts.
''It would be a mistake to assume that our disposition of this petition constitutes a decision on the merits of whether the president has the constitutional authority to fill future [judicial] vacancies, such as vacancies on this court," Stevens wrote.
Earlier last month, Bush renominated Pryor, whose term is scheduled to expire at the end of the year, for a lifetime appointment on the 11th Circuit.
''The president asserts the power to make 'recess appointments' of judges during any break of the Senate -- including, literally, even a break for lunch," wrote Thomas Goldstein, a Washington attorney representing Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, in the cases.
''That unprecedented conception of the recess appointments power obviously vitiates the cardinal authority of the Senate to pass on the president's nominees," he stated.
Bush administration lawyer Paul Clement countered that it has been longstanding practice for presidents of both parties to make recess appointments, including 12 Supreme Court justices, any time the Senate is not meeting.
''A recess appointment power that could be freely invoked during a one-day inter-session recess, but would be categorically barred during a three-month intra-session recess, would be 'irrational,"' Clement wrote, noting that intra-session recesses often are one month or more.
