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March 21, 2005
The Terri Schiavo Act: a Blow to the Rule of Law
I must confess that I have not been following the case of Terri Schiavo much. In fact, I've been avoiding it as much as my various media/blogging sources will allow. Mostly, it's just not very interesting to me. I have no significant feelings on the "right to die" issue one way or the other, so I haven't been swept up by the moral issues at the heart of it. I've made extra effort to avoid all the extraneous conspiracy issues involved, e.g. the husband's girlfriend, prior jury awards, insurance, the debate of Terri's mental state, etc.
However, this weekend the controversy crossed the line into a subject where I do have passion, the Rule of Law.
Wiki does a good job of summarizing the principal here as "a safeguard against arbitrary rulings in individual cases." My feeling is that the whole point of the Rule of Law is that you can live your life with a certain predictability, sure in the knowledge that the rules of the system will be the same tomorrow as they are today and that any changes to those rules will come gradually, with debate, and foreknowledge.
But here a case proceeded through the judiciary with various appeals and reached a conclusion, a conclusion that did not sit well with various Congress-critters. Now, it would be one thing for them to say, "Hey, I don't like how that turned out -- we should debate this issue and craft an appropriate law for future cases." I would be OK with that. But that's not what they did. Instead, they said, "Hey, I don't like that judge's ruling. Let's pass a law to force the case into a different court where we hope to get a different ruling."
That's so wrong on so many different levels. It's effectively forum shopping, which Republicans disdain, and it's a repudiation of the notion of federalism which Republicans hold in high regard. I'm not delving into this at length here. Instead, I'm going to write to my Congress-critters and express my displeasure. Here's the House roll call, but it passed the Senate on a voice vote, so there's no record.
Politics by Dan at March 21, 2005 12:09 PM
Comments
Could you please email me the body of one of your letters to your Congress critters? Mr. Lamar Smith went and voted for this mess, and I'm guessing that your words about it will be more coherent than mine right now.
Posted by: Tanya the Happy Tester at March 21, 2005 02:56 PM