March 23, 2005
By Holly Yeager
Financial Times
Long before Terri Schiavo became a household name, conservatives complained that the US judiciary was out of touch and out of control.
But a series of recent court rulings in the "right-to-die" case of the severely brain-damaged Florida woman is intensifying their dissatisfaction. The growing anger will add fuel to an already heated fight over President George W. Bush's nominations to the federal bench, as well as future debates over filling any vacancies on the Supreme Court.
Burke Balch, director of the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics at the National Right to Life Committee, reacted angrily on Wednesday to a 2-1 decision by a panel of a federal appeals court in Atlanta, which said Ms Schiavo's parents "failed to demonstrate a substantial case" that her feeding tube should be reinserted.
"The appellate court ruling is another in a series of acts of raw judicial power, determined to end the life of Terri Schiavo regardless of the rule of law or the norms of justice," Mr Balch said.
Earlier in the week, conservatives complained that, despite a quickly passed law giving federal courts jurisdiction in the case, James Whittemore a US district judge named to the bench by former President Bill Clinton also refused to reinsert the feeding tube.
Wendy Long, counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network, a new group working to win Senate approval of Mr Bush's nominees, said that although some of the most controversial rulings in the Schiavo case were made by state judges over whom Congress and the president have no control the attention brought to them would influence the debate in Washington over federal judges.
"The way it will play into the national discussion is at a very general level, as people are unhappy about a judiciary that appears to be running away and acting on its own, without any restraints on it," she said.
Ms Long and others point to several recent examples of what they say is activism by federal judges, including rulings to allow child pornography as a form of free speech, to permit a minor to get an abortion without her parents' consent, and to remove the phrase "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance.
Another often-cited example is recent rulings in several states to allow same-sex marriage, prompting Mr Bush and Congress to pursue a constitutional amendment prohibiting such marriages.
Tom DeLay, the House majority leader and a key proponent of the law that gave the federal courts jurisdiction over Ms Schiavo, made clear this week that his worry about the courts reached all the way to the top.
Speaking after the Supreme Court denied a congressional appeal over a separate aspect of the case, he said: "When this tragic episode is resolved, the Supreme Court will have some serious questions to answer about its silence and arbitrary interpretation of federalism, but those questions will have to wait."
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