Terri Schiavo and Civics 101

The Terri Schiavo case is deeply disturbing.

Mainstream, right wing, and left wing media and the foreign press have all focused on either the human story, or the fact that politicians opportunistically seized on the case for political gain. News reports focused on the drama of a husband pitted against his wife's parents; on the left and right, pundits drew the connection between the Schiavo case and the battle over abortion rights (see Katha Pollit in The Nation); George Bush urged erring on the side of caution when life was at stake. Democrats argued it just wasn't their job to intervene.

But what almost everyone has missed is the not-too-subtle attack on one of the foundations of the US political system--indeed the foundations of liberal democracy: the independent judiciary.

While everyone in the media (center, left and right) was focusing on the Schiavo case (should they pull the plug? who should decide? right to life etc.) Congress and the President directly intervened in the judicial system because they didn't like the way things were going. But to my knowledge, except for one article on CBS News online, no one has gone beyond the specific case to ask what the implications for democracy in the US are.

Everyone knows (it's the first thing kids are taught in school about the US government) that one of the foundations of our system is the separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary. The judiciary is above partisan politics, the interpreter of the Constitution and the ultimate check on both Congress and the White House.

So when Congress and the White House passed special legislation dictating that a federal circuit court had to hear the case, this was a major attack on judicial autonomy. This is in fact what the conservative Judge Birch wrote in his decision:

"... it is my judgment that, despite sincere and altruistic motivation, the legislative and executive branches of our government have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people - our Constitution."

He concluded that, "the Act invades the province of the judiciary and violates the seperation of powers principle."

Whether or not Congress and President Bush acted the way they did for "altruistic" reasons, or to undermine the judiciary, what's important is that they did. Taken in the context of the Bush administration's attacks on civil liberties with the passage of the PATRIOT act and the deliberate erosion of the separation between church and state, the right's intervention in the Schiavo case should not be taken lightly.