Posted on 08/09/2005 10:16:10 PM PDT by Crackingham
Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman whose case provoked Congressional action and a national debate over end-of-life care, became an issue on Tuesday in the Supreme Court confirmation of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. when a Democratic senator pressed him about whether lawmakers should have intervened.
The senator, Ron Wyden of Oregon, said that Judge Roberts, while not addressing the Schiavo case specifically, made clear he was displeased with Congress's effort to force the federal judiciary to overturn a court order withdrawing her feeding tube.
"I asked whether it was constitutional for Congress to intervene in an end-of-life case with a specific remedy," Mr. Wyden said in a telephone interview after the hourlong meeting. "His answer was, 'I am concerned with judicial independence. Congress can prescribe standards, but when Congress starts to act like a court and prescribe particular remedies in particular cases, Congress has overstepped its bounds.' "
The answer, which Mr. Wyden said his aides wrote down word-for-word, would seem to put Judge Roberts at odds with leading Republicans in Congress, including the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, and the House majority leader, Representative Tom DeLay, who both led the charge for Congressional intervention in the Schiavo case this spring. Mr. DeLay said at the time that the federal judiciary had "run amok."
SNIP
Mr. Wyden said that he asked Judge Roberts whether he believed states should take the lead in regulating medical practice, and that the nominee replied that "uniformity across the country would stifle the genius of the founding fathers."
Mr. Wyden said, "I came away with the sense that he was somewhat sympathetic to my notion that there should be a wide berth for states to take the lead."
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Please consider the source FReepers before you dislocate your knees.
Slimes trolling through the city dumpsters again.
Good thing Congress didn't do that in the Schiavo matter; instead Congress legislated a de novo review in federal court under the exigent circumstances of starving her to death.
I've already read the tea leaves with Roberts and all systems remain go.
Too bad some 'Freepers' will disagree with this, but a healthy respect for the separation of powers elevates the nominee in my estimation.
Seminar posters who flood this site with this Liberal tripe, like the one who posted this thread, will not succeed
If there is a silver lining to the cloud, it would be that Roberts would not be sympathetic to Uncle Sam forcing a permissive euthanasia policy nationwide. That a state could exist that does not have such a permissive policy and one could go live there if one does not want to chance dying in a state with a permissive policy.
Apparently it was a closed meeting between Wyden and Roberts, so who knows what was said exactly.
Wyden meets with Supreme Court nominee Roberts
http://www.kgw.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D8BSJMHG0.html
Wyden, a Democrat, met with Roberts for nearly an hour Tuesday at Wyden's Senate office.
The meeting was closed, but Wyden said later that he asked Roberts about Schiavo,
Wyden, who is undecided on Roberts' nomination, said Roberts told him he could not comment on the Schiavo case directly.
But Roberts did answer when Wyden asked if he thought it was constitutional for Congress to intervene in an end-of-life-case with a specific remedy. In the Schiavo case, many lawmakers advocated reinserting a feeding tube to help her live.
Roberts told Wyden he was concerned with judicial independence. Congress can prescribe standards, Roberts added, "but when Congress starts to act like a court and prescribe particular remedies in particular cases, Congress has overstepped its bounds."
Wyden said he considered the answer significant, "because the question I was asking has applicability" to the Schiavo case.
Offering a remedy "is what Congress was doing in the original version of the Schiavo bill," Wyden said, adding that Roberts "would not look favorably on Congress rushing to override the right to be left alone."
====
Roberts effectively side stepped the question.
His answer was 100% correct.
In regards to the Schiavo case, Congress only required that other judges review the case. Congress did not mandate a specific decision. It only hoped that the judges would perform their due diligence and examine the case to ensure that real justice and not formulaic justice was served on Shiavo's behalf.
It was properly within the scope of Congress to ask for such a review, just as it was properly within the scope of the courts to perform the review as they saw fit, and to decide as they saw fit.
The independence of the court was maintained. The balance of powers worked as designed.
It is sad that common sense did not prevail. That the husband no longer had a vested interest in keeping her alive, and should've divested himself of the guardianship. That Terri's wishes were not clear. That if Terri was not in a persistant vegetative state, then to allow her to die would've been murder. Or, that if she was in a PVS, then she was beyond caring about her dignity, and that it would've been more important to Terri that her parent's be allowed to care for her, so they could maintain a link with her, and maintain their hope - than to have them completely cut off from involvement in her care, and eventually to have them callously discarded by the courts as irrelevant.
So he's pro-states rights and anti-Congress? The horror. Where can I sign a petition for his impeachment and replacement with Dershowitz?
Wyden himself acknowledges that his big newsmaking query is limited in relevance only to a draft of a bill Congress never passed, and the Slimes concludes that Roberts was "displeased" with the law actually passed by Congress and that he's at odds with Frist and Delay.
Some *news*. Created out of thin air.
Good to hear, if true.
You'd think killing Terri Schiavo would be enough for them, but they demand the right to dance on her grave.
FYI:
Crackingham, since Feb 22, 2005
He rarely posts comments; he posts many, many articles. THESE ARTICLES WERE ALL POSTED JUST TODAY.
Is he's flooding FreeRepublic with articles he's posting in order to dilute articles posted by other FReepers? Is this legit?
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Just give me some more Originalists.
PLEASE!!!!!
How did Wyden vote, in the Schiavo issue.
My understanding is, three Senators voted,
those three do not include Wyden.
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