If legal scholars are right that the fight over Rod Blagojevich’s appointment of Roland Burris to replace President-elect Barack Obama in the Senate will be long, possibly ending up before the U.S. Supreme Court, I’ve got a question:

Who pays?

Rafts of lawyers filing briefs, arguing cases and scouring law books in a constitutional showdown don’t come cheaply. So, who will come up with the millions to defend Blagojevich’s harebrained appointment if it runs into one of the many roadblocks it faces?

Blagojevich himself? Not likely. He’s up to his eyeballs in legal bills already and if it comes to choosing between keeping himself out of jail and standing up for Burris, what do you think he’ll do?

Will Burris raise the dough? Maybe from a few pay-to-play dreamers who think they can derive some benefit from a seated Burris. But even if they could, whatever benefits Burris could bestow in return wouldn’t flow for more than two years of his remaining term. Burris, who has turned himself into a tragic figure of Shakespearian proportions, has no chance of re-election, unless the Republicans would run someone against him like Alan Keyes.

The Illinois attorney general is the state’s official lawyer, and Blagojevich might be expected to demand that Lisa Madigan defend the appointment. Madigan could reply that she’s the “people’s lawyer” and has no business bucking the popular public sentiment. Whatever the legalities, there’s a better chance of Madigan becoming a Republican than spend any of her office’s time or money defending Blagojevich’s actions.

Perhaps Blagojevich could find spare millions in his executive office budget, but that could set off a whole new legal battle with the Legislature about whether the governor can decide how to appropriate taxpayer money.

Don’t count on the Democratic Party to come up with the money, but maybe the Republicans would like to chip in. Ah, yes, the GOP spending money to seat the Senate’s only African American and the Democrats fighting it; what fun. More legitimately, Republicans could claim that they were defending the process against the arbitrary actions of Democrats who are trying to exclude Burris. (There’s much merit to the argument. While the U.S. Constitution says the Senate can determine the qualifications of the candidate, it doesn’t say anything about what standards of purity must be met by the governor who appoints him.)

That raises the possibility that one of the many do-gooder groups dedicated to protecting the “process” would be interested in funding the legal battle. Kind of like the ACLU defending the Nazi’s First Amendment right to march in Skokie, even though the civil libertarian group didn’t agree with anything the fascists said. Maybe some outfit like Common Cause would like to step in to back the idea that the “rule of law” would prohibit Senate members from arbitrarily excluding a “duly appointed” senator.

Let’s not rule out the possibility that former Gov. Jim Thompson, a Republican, who likes to spend millions of his law firm’s money defending crooked governors could step forward with another bushel of money.

Maybe we should just pray that no one will step forward to finance the Blagojevich/Burris defense, and allow the issue to die quietly. A compassionate deity would be glad to help.

The complexity of the legal morass that Blagojevich has created by this appointment is nearly beyond imagination. Assume that the Legislature impeaches and removes Blagojevich from office and his successor—Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn—appoints a different senator? As much as the courts eschew getting involved in such purely legislative matters, they would almost be forced to pick which of two contending candidates should be seated. (Quinn could avoid the battle naming by Burris, but would he? And who would be happy with that, except Burris?)

Suppose, on the other hand, that the Legislature finally gets off its duff and decides that Barack Obama’s replacement would be selected at a referendum? Then there’d be a legal battle between the seating of the senator appointed by Blagojevich and the one elected by Illinois voters.

The way these things go, taxpayers will end up picking up at least some, if not a lot or all, of the tab. But the cost of Blagojevich’s folly—and the Legislature’s abject failure to timely set a referendum and remove the governor’s legal power to appoint a successor—has to be measured in more than money.

The governor’s rampaging self-absorption has set the stage for a constitutional crisis of national proportions, one that will further divide the nation and fuel the widespread cynicism about government. It is beyond hope that Blagojevich would set aside his assorted pathologies and do what is right: resign. And that Burris would become the statesman and true public servant he pretends to be and refuse the appointment. This, after all, is Illinois.

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Dennis Byrne is a regular contributor to the Chicago Daily Observer and a member of the Editorial Board