WASHINGTON — The partisan battle over President Bush's judicial nominations escalated yesterday with Vice President Dick Cheney vowing to help end the Democrats' ability to block Senate votes on those judgeships.

Meanwhile, some Protestant and Jewish leaders asked Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to disassociate himself from a major conservative Christian event called "Justice Sunday," meant to rally support for Republican efforts to win Senate approval for the judges.

Speaking before the Republican National Lawyers Association, Cheney accused Senate Democrats of upsetting tradition, saying no group of senators in U.S. history had used a filibuster, a parliamentary maneuver, to block a judicial nomination supported by a majority of the Senate.

His comments came one day after the Senate Judiciary Committee approved, on a party-line vote, two state judges for federal appellate courts: Priscilla Owen of Texas and Janice Rogers Brown of California. Filibusters derailed them last year, Bush renominated them, and Democrats have promised to filibuster them again.

Cheney, however, promised to use his constitutional role as the Senate's presiding officer to keep Democrats from preventing a full Senate vote on Owen, Brown and other judicial nominees.

"I believe there is an important principle at stake," he said. "When senators filibuster a nominee who has a clear majority support, they are in effect trying to establish a 60-vote requirement for confirmation."

A filibuster in this case would allow the minority party to use extended debate to stall a nomination because it takes votes by 60 of the 100 senators to end debate. There are 55 Republican senators.

Frustrated that Democrats have blocked 10 Bush nominees from receiving an up-or-down, Frist and other Republicans have threatened to change Senate rules so that only a 51-vote majority would be required to end a filibuster.

Democrats have called this threatened GOP maneuver the "nuclear option," vowing to retaliate by bringing the Senate to a virtual standstill, except for action on national-security legislation.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the minority leader, blasted Bush after Cheney's comments, saying the president had broken a promise to stay out of the Senate fight.

"Last week, I met with the president and was encouraged when he told me he would not become involved in Republican efforts to break the Senate rules," Reid said. "Now, it appears he was not being honest and that the White House is encouraging this raw abuse of power."

Meanwhile, critics spoke out against the "Justice Sunday" event, which involves a national telecast tomorrow as well as Frist's expected participation via video.

Several religious leaders, in a conference call with reporters, castigated some of the Louisville event's organizers for using what they described as divisive religious language. They called on Frist to renounce comments such as those made by the Family Research Council, which has said those opposed to Bush's judges were against "people of faith."

"We would like to urge Sen. Frist to reconsider supporting such movements," said Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, a top leader in the Presbyterian Church (USA). "We believe that this is a time when religious people need to come together and not create a climate of divisiveness. And it's certainly not a time when we turn religious disagreements into religious conflicts."

Bob Edgar, the National Council of Churches general secretary, said "Justice Sunday" should be called "Just Us Sunday."

"It makes one political point of view a litmus test for Christian faith and in so doing attempts to disenfranchise if not excommunicate the millions of American Christians who hold a different view," Edgar said.