Fri, 15 Apr 2005

Judicial Activism and Intellectual Consistency

That's the title of great post over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. It quotes extensively from Dahlia Lithwick's review of the book Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America in Slate. Here's a short sample:

How many times in the last few months did you hear someone argue that Judge Greer should have taken guardianship away from Michael Schiavo and give it to the parents so they could decide to keep her alive. But doing so would have required him inventing new law that was not part of the Florida law. Under Florida law, in a dispute over what a non-responsive patient would want done in a situation where they cannot voice their current wishes, the court is required to take guardianship of the patient themselves and determine if there is clear and convincing evidence of the patient's prior stated wishes. Judge Greer did that. He did not rule that Michael was her guardian and therefore he could pull the plug if he wanted to, he ruled that Terri herself had expressed her wish not to be kept alive in such a circumstance. If he had ignored that, refused to take court guardianship and enforce her own wishes, and then given authority over it to the parents, he would have been doing something the law simply did not allow. He would have been doing exactly what they pretend to complain about in other cases - ignoring the letter of the law to ensure a desired outcome.

Go read the whole thing. The religious right has apparently taken Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous dictum about a foolish consistency being the hobgoblin of little minds quite to heart.

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