CLOSED CAPTION from FoxNFriends...
Tue Mar 22 05:28:19 2005
What we know now is this, the judge -- I know that's not a 9:00 A.M. To 5:00 P.M. Courtroom, but here we are at 6:30 A.M. Eastern time, and we get this ruling, i never put a day into law school but i find that somewhat surprising, but getting up in the morning deciding this, doesn't peen he is not going to decide that he's going to reconnect the tube maybe later on today, correct?
>> That's correct. And there is some evidence that she could live a week or two weeks without the feeding tube, so she may still be in good health, alive, when he does decide, and he may still decide as the final matter to connect the feeding tube, but if he doesn't, and I don't think he is going to, then there will be appeals up all the way up and maybe even to the supreme court, and I think there is a significant chance that she might die in the meantime and that the whole thing would become mooT. It seemed to me the handwriting was on the wall about what this judge was going to do when he didn't get up in the morning yesterday morning, in the middle of the night yesterday night when they filed the paper in court and take some emergency measure to preserve of terri schiavo until he could consider the casE. It seemed to me it was clear.
Brian: So I understand, so if he's going to go that direction, why wait? Why not make the decision and give the parents the opportunity to take it to another level?
>> He might. If he's a humane person, he may well do that. These are enormous constitutional issues, so they take a lot of briefing and consideration. The question of whether congress could open the federal court doors transgress the line between legislatures and court and between state and federal power and to make a specific decision about a specific case, which is usually the job of the courts and not congress, that's an enormous constitutional issue that will require a lot of argument and briefing and then the question of whether terri schiavo has a right to live or a right to die, even if the judge first decides the federal court doors were opened properly, then he has to get into that big question of right to die versus right to life under the constitution and that's a very big question and very complicated, so there's going to have to be briefing and argument, but all that said, if he is so minded, he could do this very rapidly, and allow these emergency appeals. There could even be an emergency appeal on this initial emergency order to not reconnect her even temporarily to preserve her health wile all the bigger issues are being considereD. There could be an appeal right now and probably will bE. In fact, they filed preliminary papers already in the court of -- federal court of appeals, to put back the feeding tube as an emergency matteR.
Kiran: Paul rothstein, please stick around. Georgetown university law professor. We're going to take a quick break. We're getting word from the associated press that the federal judge deciding on terri schiavo's fate refused an order to reinsert terri schiavo's feeding tube, that was an emergency request filed by her parents. The final outcome still not known as we're hearing from