Jurists March Us Cheerfully Down the Slippery Slope

I posted on Townhall's weblog today (where I am a contributor), and the post was so long that it occurred to me it really belonged on my own weblog. So here it is, reproduced in its entirety.

As an attorney and a former law professor, I have never been so disgusted with the legal process in my life. By that, let me be clear - I mean the court system. Throughout nearly twenty years of being an attorney, I have always defended "the process," even when I disagreed vehemently with the results. But that is because the process, to me, always seemed to have a certain basic integrity.

The Terri Schiavo case has changed all of that. I have heard the most appalling lack of concern for basic legal procedures on the part of Judge Greer in Florida state court - such as excluding evidence that tends to discredit Michael Schiavo as a dispassionate guardian of his wife's best interests (as if his living situation and his spending her rehabiliation money on his legal fees isn't enough), refusing to order basic medical tests, refusing to hear any new evidence at all. But the worst part of all is rendering a decision - that Terri Schiavo "wants" to die by two weeks of starvation and dehydration - despite her lack of any written directive or will, on the basic of an alleged comment she made in passing to her husband after watching a movie. Nothing in writing. No witnesses. You would think, then, that the only person - the only witness - who could attest to such a statement would have to have profound credibility, and no conflicts of interest, in order for the court to starve and dehydrate someone to death on the basis of his or her testimony.

But you would be wrong. Instead, the Florida court has taken the word of a philandering, adulterous bigamist with a financial incentive to see his "wife" dead, and called that "legal process." And as Ann Coulter points out beautifully in her column today, everyone - from the Florida legislature to the federal district and appellate court, to journalists across the country - is falling all over themselves calling for respect for that decision under the guise of "the rule of law" and "states' rights."

Although support for letting Terri Schiavo starve and dehydrate to death comes mostly from the left (who, it must be noted, would not be frothing at the mouth with respect for a Florida court's decision if it permitted parents to prevent their teenage daughter from getting an abortion, or ordered Intelligent Design to be taught in tandem with evolution in public schools), it does not come entirely from the left. In fact, a significant number of conservative commentators have expressed support for "letting Terri die," including (today) Neil Boortz.

They offer different reasons. Some echo the "states' rights" argument. Neil Boortz argues that those who believe in eternal life should be comforted at the notion that Terri would be going home to God.

What rot. I rarely find myself at such odds with conservative commentators, but that is the biggest bunch of garbage I've read so far. If we believe in eternal life, then why not kill a lot of other people, for a lot of other reasons? I can see it now: "My father has Alzheimers" Well, you believe in God, don't you? "My mother has a brain tumor." Ah, well, there's always eternal life. "My brother was paralyzed in a motorcycle accident." He'll be whole again, in Heaven.

Two days ago during Rush Limbaugh's program, he asked, "where will we go next?" I can tell you where we're going next. There have already been scads of doctors and nurses who have attested in news articles that death by starvation and dehydration is NOT "painless." A few more Terri Schiavos, and we will begin to hear the drumbeats for methods that are in fact "quicker," "more merciful," and genuinely painless. And then, the lethal injections will start.

Oh, but don't worry about that, the advocates for starving Terri (like Michael Schiavo's attorney George Felos) will say. This is a liberty interest. A matter of personal freedom. We're only going to kill those who have said they want to die. Uh-huh. With no better evidence than that produced in Judge George Greer's kangaroo court.

But there's more. There will be people - plenty of them - who are sick, or disabled, and who will, in fact say that they "want" to die, because they fear becoming a burden on their families. An emotional burdern. Or perhaps a financial one. The pressure is already mounting from all sides. In fact, information was released this week that now says the Social Security system will go bankrupt a year earlier than was previously anticipated. And in response to rising health care costs, there is an increasingly loud clamor (from the left, of course) for "single-payer" (read "government-controlled") health care. So, then the government will decide what treatment you merit? Who lives? Who dies? And what it costs?

Doesn't the confluence of all of these trends bother anyone? It damn well should. The slippery slope has never been laid out for us so clearly. Or so closely.

But this is the root of my disgust with the court system in the Schiavo case. Because historically, even if the "average Joe" didn't see the impending threats to his life or liberty on the horizon by what seemed (at the time) to be a banal case, jurists always did. That's their job. And they would seek to protect against government incursions against those liberties in the way they decided those cases.

But no more. The Florida courts, and the federal courts that have participated in Terri Schiavo's case have abandoned that esteemed tradition. And they should all be ashamed. More to the point, they should be afraid. Because what will come next will be worse. And they, unlike the protestors outside Terri's hospice, unlike Governor Jeb Bush, unlike this Congress, and unlike President Bush, will have to view themselves as complicitous in the impending erosion of the rights and protections for the elderly, the sick, the dying, the disabled, and the vulnerable of all stripes.

I can't speak for the medical profession (although I am sure there are those that can), but I think this is a sad day for the American legal profession.