Democratic Party lawyers have determined that no more than half the delegates from Florida and Michigan can be seated at the party's August convention, dealing a blow to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's efforts to seat the full delegations from those states.

    The rules committee of the Democratic National Committee meets on Saturday to determine whether to seat the delegates from these states, which were penalized for holding early primaries.

    In asking that the full delegations from these states be seated, Mrs. Clinton hopes to narrow Senator Barack Obama's delegate edge and make the case that by including the votes from these states, she will have more of the popular vote in the nominating contests, an assertion that has come under some dispute. But the party's legal analysis, contained in a 38-page memo to the committee, says the committee can either seat only 50 percent of the delegates or seat them all but give them only half a vote, which amounts to the same thing.

    Whatever the committee decides about the delegates may not be a big factor in Mrs. Clinton's pursuit of the nomination. Even if she were awarded all the delegates in proportion to her popular vote in those states - her best-case scenario - she could not overtake Senator Obama's delegate lead.

    It is not entirely clear what the Obama campaign intends to ask for at the meeting but Mr. Obama has said he wants the delegates seated. His top aide, David Axelrod, has said that the campaign could go "half-way" on any compromise.

    The important goal for the Clinton campaign is to include the popular votes from those two disputed states in its overall vote tally. The Clinton campaign is already doing this, but because Michigan and Florida have been stripped of their delegates, an air of illegitimacy hangs over their votes and her opponents do not recognize their popular vote.

    If the rules committee seats even half the delegates from those states, that could confer some legitimacy on the Clinton's inclusion of those votes in their overall tally, although a Clinton aide said that the campaign does not feel it needs the seating of the delegates to legitimize the popular vote. Those votes have been counted and certified by the secretaries of state in both states, the aide said, and the rules committee cannot alter that.

    The rules committee's meeting is important because it needs to address the decisions by Michigan and Florida to move up their primaries in violation of party rules. The committee stripped the states of their delegates as punishment for doing so. If it restores the delegates, even at half strength, it may send a message to other states that next time they can violate the calendar without serious consequences, in effect a license for chaos.

    So the committee is in a box in trying to figure out how to respect the voters in Florida and Michigan, who were not responsible for this potential disenfranchisement, while still honoring voters in 48 other states where officials followed the rules.