3.25.2005
Schiavo Lesson on Judiciary Trump Card (NYTimes.com)
NEWS ANALYSIS
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: March 24, 2005
The United States Congress and the governor of Florida have devoted extraordinary and all but single-minded energy to keeping Terri Schiavo alive. But all they have achieved so far is a bitter lesson in judicial supremacy.
It is a lesson as old as Marbury v. Madison, the 1803 case in which Chief Justice John Marshall famously said that "it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is," and as fresh as Bush v. Gore, the 2000 decision that decided a presidential election.
Its latest teachers were Judge George W. Greer, of the Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court in Clearwater, Fla., and the federal appeals court in Atlanta.
Judge Greer blocked Gov. Jeb Bush from following through on a suggestion at a news conference that state officials might take Ms. Schiavo into protective custody. And, even as he agreed to consider overnight what state officials called new evidence that she might be conscious, Judge Greer staked out a primary role in the process.
(More ... The New York Times > National > News Analysis: Schiavo Lesson on Judiciary Trump Card) ¶ 11:26
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: March 24, 2005
The United States Congress and the governor of Florida have devoted extraordinary and all but single-minded energy to keeping Terri Schiavo alive. But all they have achieved so far is a bitter lesson in judicial supremacy.
It is a lesson as old as Marbury v. Madison, the 1803 case in which Chief Justice John Marshall famously said that "it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is," and as fresh as Bush v. Gore, the 2000 decision that decided a presidential election.
Its latest teachers were Judge George W. Greer, of the Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court in Clearwater, Fla., and the federal appeals court in Atlanta.
Judge Greer blocked Gov. Jeb Bush from following through on a suggestion at a news conference that state officials might take Ms. Schiavo into protective custody. And, even as he agreed to consider overnight what state officials called new evidence that she might be conscious, Judge Greer staked out a primary role in the process.
(More ... The New York Times > National > News Analysis: Schiavo Lesson on Judiciary Trump Card) ¶ 11:26
