A NATION OF LAWS

Conservative activists are threatening to use the case of Terri Schiavo to press for more right-leaning judges on the federal courts. Current judges, they say, are ignoring the will of the people and abusing their powers. Aside from running afoul of this country’s long history of separation of powers, such thinking is not supported by facts and has no place in debates over who is chosen to sit on the federal bench.

Judges are sworn to uphold the country’s laws and have no responsibility to adhere to public opinion. If they did, however, in this case, their rulings are in line with public opinion, according to recent polls. Six of 10 respondents in a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll said they agreed with a Florida judge’s ruling allowing the removal of Ms. Schiavo’s feeding tube. Respondents said they would want to remove a feeding tube from am child or spouse in the same condition. Terri Schiavo is the 41-year-old Florida woman who doctors say is in a persistent vegetative state after her heart stopped briefly 15 years ago.

An ABC News poll found that seven in 10 believed that Congress inappropriately intervened in the case. Two-thirds of those surveyed Sunday night said that political leaders were more concerned with gaining political advantage than with Ms. Schiavo herself.

Previous to Congress’ involvement, the Schiavo case had been reviewed by 19 separate judges, all of whom ruled that removing the feeding tube was proper. Since Congress passed a law last weekend allowing Ms. Schiavo’s parents to take the case directly to federal courts, four levels of judges have reached the same conclusion.

In this case, conservative activists are clearly judge shopping, a practice they say they deplore when it comes to class action and medical malpractice suits. In nearly two dozen tries, they have yet to find a judge who agrees with them. This leads them to conclude that the judges are abusing their powers, in the words of Burke Balch of the National Right to Life Committee.

Anyone who reads the rulings issued this week should be struck by the care that the judges took in reaching their decisions, which were made in lightning speed due to Ms. Schiavo’s condition. “There is no denying the absolute tragedy that has befallen Mrs. Schiavo,” a panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in its decision. “We all have our own family, our own loved ones, our own children. However, we are called upon to make a collective, objective decision concerning a question of law. … No matter how much we wish Mrs. Schiavo has never suffered such a horrible accident, we are a nation of laws.”

This is how the law is supposed to work.