Posted on 03/19/2005 12:50:50 AM PST by Dane
With Schiavo Subpoenas, Congress Is Testing the Limits of Its Power
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: March 19, 2005
The Congressional subpoenas issued yesterday to the doctors treating Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged Florida woman, were clever, in the way lawyers can be clever.
Subpoenas are designed to obtain testimony and evidence for a court case or a Congressional hearing. But the subpoenas issued by a committee of the House of Representatives required Ms. Schiavo's doctors to maintain what they said was a key piece of evidence - the medical equipment keeping her alive - "in its current and continuing state of operations."
It is true that subpoenas occasionally call for recipients to preserve relevant evidence. But that evidence is not usually a human life.
Similar subpoenas were issued to Ms. Schiavo's husband and to a hospice administrator. Another subpoena, to Ms. Schiavo, sought only her testimony.
Also yesterday, a Senate committee invited Ms. Schiavo and her husband to appear before it, noting pointedly that it is a federal crime to harm a person called to testify before Congress.
Legal experts across the political spectrum said these maneuvers tested the boundaries of legitimate legislative action.
"It's simply outrageous," said Charles Fried, a law professor at Harvard who served as the solicitor general in the Reagan administration. "It is abusive and disgraceful. Even a senator has an obligation to use his power honestly and not to engage in subterfuge and pretense."
In remarks to reporters yesterday, Representative Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, said the measures were needed to save Ms. Schiavo from "an act of barbarism," referring to the removal of her feeding tube.
Experts in constitutional law and federal procedure said the Congressional actions were unprecedented.
"I can't think of any parallels," said Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard who often supports liberal positions.
"McCarthy, for all his abuses, did not reach out and try to undo the processes of a state court," Professor Tribe said, referring to Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose cold war hearings into communism were widely viewed as Congressional overreaching.
Congress has the power to issue subpoenas in investigations, but that power has limits. Here, the House Committee on Government Reform has said it will hold hearings on "the long-term care of incapacitated adults."
That is "an absolutely legitimate subject for inquiry," said Patrick O. Gudridge, a law professor at the University of Miami. The "tricky question," he continued, is whether keeping Ms. Schiavo alive would aid that inquiry or even be relevant to it.
"Congress is pushing the outer edge of the envelope here," Professor Gudridge said.
Others said the subpoenas were simply illegitimate.
"You cannot issue a subpoena that interferes with a constitutional right," said Arthur Miller, an expert on civil procedure at Harvard, referring to what he said was Ms. Schiavo's right to die. "It's a blunderbuss. It smacks of desperation."
The Senate's invitation to the Schiavos, meant to bring a witness-protection law into play, also raises questions.
"The federal statute that makes it a crime to interfere with witnesses presupposes that there is some valid exercise of legislative power," Professor Tribe said. "It would be hard to think of one here."
He continued: "It's Congress trying to change the decisions of the state judiciary and violating the purposes of federalism. It's Congress trying to deprive someone of an adjudicated right by political edict in violation of due process of law."
Arthur L. Caplan, the chairman of the department of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said the Schiavo case had already received ample scrutiny.
"It has to be the most extensively litigated right-to-die case in the history of the United States," Professor Caplan said
According to Terri'sfight.org, Michael Schiavo received over a million dollars from a malpractice suit to take care of Terri.
Ask The Bent One and the kook fringe left.
I've seen posts stating that .. but I don't know for a fact that is true
The Bent One? Such a description, sadly, doesn't reduce the list of suspects...
ok, that settles it thanx. liberals don't have a leg to stand on for this one then. if she received compensation for something that was done wrong to her, she surely deserves to be kept alive, even if there is virtually no hope for recovery, she is kind of entitled to that.
And as I said the act of removing the tube is murder by starvation. I really don't get it - if she can feel anything at all, then death by starvation is surely cruel. And if she is completely nonresponsive on all levels and doesn't feel anything at all, why does her husband want her to die and why does he care to fight it this hard, what difference does it make if she is kept alive with the money she is entitled to in the first place? I just don't understand this.
I don't know about 'ordinary' Americans.. but decent ones do not.. even if a majority called for her murder, it still would not be right.. one of my favorite quotes, although I don't know who said it:
"Wrong is still wrong, no matter how many people are doing it, and Right is still right, no matter if no one is doing it.
We have spent the last 6 months trying to talk to our dog and he does nothing but stick him tongue out and fart.
The dog refuses to play with the children, bark and chase the mailman or keep cats out of our yard and serves no useful purpose anymore. He has become nothing more than a financial burden on us with absolutely no hopes of recovery.
Perhaps we should remove his feeding bowl and put him out of his misery.
Oh, so very true.
I feel so frustrated. Can't something be done to save this poor woman?
No, they are showing what the limits of the non-elected judicial are and are at the same time, hopefully, showing the true meaning of the Constitution and what it's writings were meant to stand for in reference to the inbred say of the population via a Democratic Republic system.
and Judge GREER isn't?????
Mo1's just sticking to the facts that she knows to be true.
Only the evil one's amongst us.
It's beyond me how any person could this to a fellow human. Then again, I think the same thing every day when I consider the babies killed in abortuaries.
Yes, something can be done..unfortunately, the people with actual power in this case, stand idly by with their thumbs up their bums, hoping that someone else will do something, afraid that a wrong move with hurt their political careers...
and yet if you did starve your dog, you'd be arrested and demonized in the press..
I'm in politics. I know the risks of such an issue, but Terri's life is worth putting a career on the line.
Can Jeb do anymore?
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
The Liberal Democratic Party of America = The Cult of Death.
Things are going to get much worse before they get better Im afraid. At the moment we are drifting dangerously towards total anarchy.
It is easy to chuckle and say that civil war is impossible but I can assure you that the lines have already been drawn and the day is drawing near when brother will kill brother.
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