Despite the continued legal challenges from her opponent Joe Miller, Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski's campaign expects that her general election write-in victory over the tea party-backed insurgent who defeated her in the GOP primary will be certified well before the new class of U.S. senators is scheduled to be sworn in on Jan. 5.

On Friday, the Alaska Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Miller's appeal of a superior court decision that upheld the state's vote count.

Current unofficial results showed Murkowski leading Miller by 10,328 votes, but U.S. federal judge Ralph Breistline stopped certification of the results until Miller's legal challenges in state court were resolved.

"It's likely that the federal judge will have time to decide this before Christmas," Murkowski campaign manager Kevin Sweeney told RealClearPolitics. "Worst case being that we would go into the week after Christmas, but once the Supreme Court rules on Friday, that gives the federal court plenty of time to hear any additional concerns and then remove the stay."

Even if the ballots that were unsuccessfully challenged by the Miller camp were to be excluded, the incumbent senator would still lead Miller by over 2,000 votes.

But Miller is showing no signs of giving up the fight. In a statement released on Monday, the Miller camp said that the lower court's ruling "essentially modifies state law" because it allowed some ballots to be counted in which the voters did not write in Lisa Murkowski's first and last name exactly as it appeared on her candidate's declaration form.

"We have consistently asserted that the law should be followed strictly," Miller wrote. "The fact that the legislature stated that there should be ‘no exceptions' to the ballot counting method is what, in our view, should govern this matter. Under the current ruling, there are now over 8,000 exceptions, a result everyone who favors the rule of law should question."

The Miller camp also continues to question the election's integrity on several additional accounts, citing among other issues equal protection concerns due to the way Murkowski's ballots were all counted by hand and Miller's were not, accusations of voter fraud in conjunction with ballots it says were cast by felons, and questions of fairness regarding the expedited timeframe of the legal process.

Miller spokesman Randy DeSoto shrugged off the charge that Miller's continued legal challenge was only delaying the inevitable result and could damage his long-term reputation, especially in the event that he seeks to run for elected office again.

"I think many people in Alaska feel that there's nothing wrong with making sure that this election was carried out correctly," DeSoto said. "And the fact that it was an unusual election with the write-ins and that new rules were promulgated 36 hours before the actual review began, those sort of things raise enough issues that people feel that the court should sort it out."

Amid the Supreme Court's decision to expedite the appeal process, the Murkowski camp is no longer expressing concerns it had previously voiced that the senator could lose her seniority, or even fail to be seated in January, due to the legal progress.

Murkowski's campaign manager anticipated that the Supreme Court judge would agree with the lower court's ruling that allowed for some discretion in interpreting voter intent in the write-in ballots that were counted for Murkowski.

"The superior court judge's decision was extremely clear that he believed the state followed the law appropriately -- it didn't leave very much doubt, I don't think," Sweeney said. "Everything is on track, and we were able to make the case that this needs to be dealt with swiftly, and that's what's happened."

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