Here are a couple of good articles on the Schiavo case. It’s The Law, Not the Judge explains a few basics of the decision-making on the competing claims in the case, and The Rhetoric in the Schiavo Case brings it down to earth.
What’s happening right now is a fight over Terri Schiavo’s remains among three interest groups: Right-to-Lifers, Disablility Rights activists, and Neo-Feminists, with politicians doing a straddle. We’ll have more to say about these groups and their objectives later.
I’ll send an Amazon gift certificate to Judge Greer to help soothe the hurt feelings from all the mean things people like me have said. Who knew that highly-paid, public-trough jobs-for-life could be soooooo stressful?
You can add a fourth to your list, too, and that’s the Declarationists that believe all branches of government are equal, and that each one has a duty to protect American lives. The judicial branch failed miserably here (the poor babies), so the other two have acted. Their failure to achieve relief is at the root of what people are upset about.
Most days, the Right-to-Lifers criticize the bench for its “activist” tendencies. Lately, they’ve been criticizing judicial restraint.
What do the judges have to do to please you people, throw out the law and decide every case on the basis of what feels good at the time?
We used to do that sort of thing in the 60s (“if it feels good, do it”), so it wouldn’t be too hard.
You should probably ask a right-to-lifer that question.
To please me, though? Apply the same evidentiary standards to a civil life-and-death case that would be required in a criminal life-and-death court? Perhaps empanel a jury? I don’t know, Richard…I’m still cogitating on what I think is the best answer. I know that this one is the wrong one.
I know you love beating the Christian drum, but it’s truly irritating as I haven’t mentioned religion or spirituality at all with regards to this issue. I wouldn’t deny that my Christianity affects my thinking, but my goals and the arguments behind them don’t need to go that deep. But having to constantly chop through the crap and somehow answer for Randall Terry is a total ass-whipping. Surely you can find a different argument if you’re talking to me.
Or do you believe that there is no valid argument from my position without invoking God on my behalf?
Sorry, I forgot your angle isn’t right-to-life, it’s fathers’ rights over husband’s rights.
Criminal courts have their rules because they don’t want to wrongly convict an innocent man. Civil cases involving best course of treatment don’t have a safe side to err on, so they have to endeavor to get it right.
So there’s a lower burden of proof – “clear and convincing” vs. “beyond a reasonable doubt”. I think that’s sufficient. By my analysis, Terri Schiavo’s been dead for 15 years so nobody’s killing her now.
Never mind. Thanks for humoring me.
We’ll see how receptive your website is. As I don’t like to leave my email address, I get viruses when I communicate rather iconoclastic views.
For your elucidation: you have left intelligent posts at a few sites I visit, so I followed you home.
On Shciavo (and I don’t like dehumanization, so forgive the Title), a relative of mine who had a disabling stroke was hooked up to machines, tried to tear out the IV’s and had them reinserted by the hospital. She hated every minute she was maintained after her life had ended, and showed her misery at her funeral, where her daughters who hated the hospital for ending her life so badly kept her coffin open.