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Thursday, January 27, 2005

Inactivist judges

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

Many of those who complain about "activist judges" were likely disappointed in the inaction of the U.S. Supreme Court in Florida's Terri Schiavo case.

The high court's passivity was correct. It cements the Florida Supreme Court's sound ruling that Florida's Legislature and Gov. Jeb Bush had attempted to unconstitutionally override the courts. In a bit of stunning legislative arrogance, lawmakers passed and Bush signed a bill to obviate a judge's order that Schiavo's feeding tube be removed, in accordance with what her husband said were her stated wishes.

It was a transparent attempt to curry favor with right-to-lifers and, worse, to insert the power of the state into an intensely private matter. The legislative grandstanding seemed a clear violation of the traditional conservative notion that politicians shouldn't meddle in the private lives of their citizens.

As a spokeswoman for the Hemlock Society of Washington pointed out when the Florida Legislature passed the so-called Terri's Law, we in this state are at least governed by laws creating a hierarchy of persons who can make decisions for an incapacitated patient such as Schiavo. And spouses, such as Michael Schiavo, are high on that hierarchy -- higher than parents.

There are no real winners in this wrenching case. There are only losers. But we would have all been losers if the case had been allowed to weaken the separation of powers or the right of individuals to control their own lives -- and deaths.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/209490_judges.html