When a federal judge in January scrapped the system that political parties have long used to pick state judges, many observers expected the decision would rouse Albany to quick action. While the state Senate did pass legislation within three weeks that would put candidates for state Supreme Court through primary elections, the issue is unresolved months later.

Now, state lawmakers are asking for another year to mull the issue.

A recent letter from the office of Attorney General Eliot Spitzer asks the federal court reviewing the case to give the Legislature through June 2007 to craft its solution. The request for more time also comes with a back-up proposal: that a federal judge prepare his own recommendations for nominating state judges in case lawmakers in Albany miss their proposed deadline.

“This schedule strikes a proper balance,” the recent letter from Mr. Spitzer’s solicitor general, Caitlin Halligan, said. “It affords legislators answerable to the electorate sufficient time to deliberate about a matter that has been subject to considerable public debate, but nonetheless establishes a deadline by which the Legislature must take action.”

The letter was sent to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel is currently examining the case.

In January, a U.S.District Court judge in Brooklyn, John Gleeson, ruled that New York’s unique system of judicial nominating conventions – during which political parties pick their candidates for the November election – was unconstitutional. He found that county party leaders, rather than elected delegates, controlled which judicial candidates would be nominated at the conventions.

Judge Gleeson ordered an end to the nominating conventions and ordered that primaries be held beginning this year to nominate candidates for approximately 25 vacancies on the state Supreme Court. The judge then stayed that decision at the request of current judges, thus allowing the very nominating conventions he declared unconstitutional to convene this September.

In New York City,the ruling set off an earnest and wide-ranging debate among lawyers and judges over the merits of various systems for picking state judges.Those who oppose primaries, including the state’s chief judge, have pointed out that primary elections would require judicial candidates to solicit campaign donations from lawyers who would later appear before them in court.

The recent letter raises the question of when the Legislature will actually take up the issue – if ever. As the legislative session draws to a close this week, the comments of one lawmaker suggest that Judge Gleeson’s ruling has not, after all, set the groundwork for action in Albany.

An upstate member of the state Assembly’s Judiciary Committee, William Barclay, said he detected growing support for primary elections, but questioned whether that would soon translate into new law.

“Whether there is an intention to get the thing done, I don’t know,” Mr. Barclay, a Republican of Oswego County, said in a telephone interview yesterday. “My guess is probably not. If there was a real push to get it done,I don’t see why it wouldn’t have happened in the first place.”

In the last month, lawyers for the attorney general’s office have not overlooked the possibility that lawmakers will delay indefinitely. Ms. Halligan’s letter asks the federal appeals court to order Judge Gleeson to hold hearings “regarding the question of an appropriate remedy in the event the Legislature fails to take action.”

Lawyers for the state have indicated that the aim of such proceedings would be to preserve the nominating convention system, but allow for specific changes aimed at promoting the independence of the delegates.