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the courts have ruled
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Euthanasia
& the “Right to die”
(for frequent updates with the
latest court decisions, visit our message board)
Below
you will find analysis of court decisions that have either changed the law or
society in a significant way, without the consent of the people, or are simply
examples of poor decisions.
For
shorter summaries without as much analysis, use the following links:
Separation of people and faith Freedom of speech
Same-sex marriage Freedom of association
Foreign courts deciding our law Historical bad law
Your husband has a Constitutional right
to kill you!
In the case involving a
woman named Terri Schindler-Schiavo, in the State of Florida, resides
everything you could fear about courts ignoring law, ignoring precedents, and
trampling on the most vulnerable to stand behind personal and radical beliefs.
This website cannot do
justice to the plight of Terri. Our
only comment is this: most, if not
all, you may have heard about this case is simply wrong. She is not in a vegetative state, and
she never clearly asserted a “right to die”. It is about a disabled woman and basic
human rights denied. I refer you to
the family’s website, TerrisFight.org,
for more and better information about the ongoing tragedy and perversion of
law.
Since this website was first created, a lot has happened in Terri’s case. For the facts and history of the case, I can’t say it better than Terri’s family and supporters, so for in-depth coverage of what has happened outside the court battles, I refer you again to TerrisFight.org.
In case you are not inclined to research the
case there, I will provide this much in the way of background. Terri Schindler-Schiavo, a disabled
woman who is conscious and is not terminally ill, was ordered by the
guardianship court empowered to look after her interests to have food and water
withheld from her until she was dead.
The tubes providing food and water were removed on October 15,
2003. After being without food and
water for six days, the elected Florida Legislature passed what became known as
Terri’s Law on October 21.
The Governor of Florida acted under the authority granted to him by
Terri’s Law and issued a one-time stay of death for the purpose of having
a Guardian ad Litem appointed for Terri to inform the court, which would retain
jurisdiction over Terri’s very life, of what was in Terri’s best
interests. Terri’s Law was
challenged by her husband, and the case eventually made its way to the Florida
Supreme Court.
On August 30, 2004, I attended a panel
discussion about the ethical considerations of Terri’s case in
As for the Florida Supreme Court’s
decision, handed down September 23, 2004, there is so much wrong with it that
the task of analyzing the quality of the decision from a legal perspective
causes one to alternately laugh and cry.
The decision is worthless as a piece of jurisprudence, a true mess, but
does have great value to the devotees of the global death cult known as the
Right to Die Movement. I shall
attempt, however, to point out the decision’s flaws for you.
Allow me to begin at the end. On page 26 of the 30 page decision, the
opinion, authored by Chief Justice Pariente, devotes two sentences to the heart
of the matter, and simply states a conclusion. There is a principle in the law known as
parens patriae. That Latin term means that the state
has the power to act as the parent of any child or incapacitated person who is
in need of protection. It is a
fairly simple concept, and is the reason we have laws allowing the states to
take and care for children abused by their parents, for instance. It also applies to the disabled, for
reasons that ought to be obvious.
The ancient doctrine of parens
patriae means that any branch of the government, by itself, has the
obligation to protect citizens who cannot protect themselves. No branch of government needs permission
of another to act within its abilities to prevent exploitation and abuse. The rest of the opinion ignores the
concept, but for two sentences.
Justice Pariente’s reasoning goes like this: the legislature certainly has the
authority to pass a law to protect such citizens, but it may not do so in an
unconstitutional fashion. And
Terri’s law, in turn, is unconstitutional because…well, because the
legislature, the Court says, doesn’t have the authority to pass that law
to protect such a citizen. That is
essentially the bottom line of the 30-page opinion. It is circular and self-contradictory,
and not worthy of a first year law student.
The decision is split in two parts. In the first, the Court declares the law
allowing Terri a reprieve from her death by dehydration violates the doctrine
of separation of powers, and in the second, that Terri’s Law is an
unlawful delegation of legislative authority. Those two sets of reasoning contradict
each other.
On page 5, Justice Pariente writes that after
Terri was first condemned by the guardianship court, “the litigation
continued because the Schindlers [Terri’s family] began an attack on the final
order.” Most people would
just call it taking an appeal of a disputed order. The Court’s words are juvenile,
quite frankly, and betray an attitude that was on display during oral arguments
when the Justice could be seen to frown and grow frustrated when the attorney
for Terri’s husband didn’t do a good enough job of giving the Court
the answers it wanted to hear.
On page 8, the Court cites with approval the
earlier opinion of the 2nd District Court of Appeal, which said,
“it may be unfortunate that when families cannot agree, the best forum we
can offer…is a public courtroom…but the law currently provides no
better solution that adequately protects the interests of promoting the value
of life.” Given the Supreme
Court’s contempt for the legislature’s attempts, in passing
Terri’s Law, to adequately protect the interests of promoting the value
of life, the fact that they cite this passage is dripping with irony, and is
once again self-contradictory.
On pages 10 and 11, the Court recites the brief
act of
On page 11, the Court states simply “this
Court…has traditionally applied a strict separation of powers
doctrine.” Wow. Wrong. Where to begin? Bush v. Gore, 2000, comes to mind, in
which the Florida Supreme Court ordered the rest of
The Court went on to quote James Madison, from
the Federalist Papers, and Thomas Jefferson, to suggest that the legislature,
while attempting to buy some time for a condemned disabled woman, is just plain
dangerous! How quaint, as if the
Founders fought the Revolution so that husbands could have their disabled wives
killed by withholding food and water.
The Court failed to quote other statements by those men that might be inconvenient
for them, like when Thomas Jefferson stated in 1820, “To consider the
judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very
dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of
an oligarchy.”
On page 14 the Court cites what it apparently
believes to be persuasive precedent for the notion that a court’s final
decision is the last, supreme and irrefutable word. The Court cites other cases that say
things like “having achieved finality…a judicial decision becomes
the last word of the judicial department
with regard to a particular case…” The italics are mine, because this Court
does not seem to have noticed those words.
They are repeated elsewhere in the opinion, but seem to have no meaning
to the justices. Supreme Court, the
best precedent you can come up with for your decision does not say that judges
get the last word. It only says
that a judge, when delivering a final judgment, has the last word within your
own branch. They cite authority
that is legally meaningless to the conclusion they are drawing.
On page 15, the Court notes that
“appellate review for the benefit of litigants aggrieved by the decisions
of the lower court…is the exclusive remedy.” The Supreme Court is simply stomping its
foot here, declaring “you’re not the boss of me, I’m the boss
of YOU!” It’s nonsense,
and untrue, and very hypocritical.
Think about this. What they
are declaring here is that if a death-row inmate is pardoned by the Governor or
is granted a reprieve by the
On page 16, the Court explains how important it
is, deciding weighty matters like child abuse cases, forgetting that they only
do so pursuant to the authority granted to the courts by the elected
legislature to do so. This whole
case is about the Court explaining that the peoples’ representatives are
not authorized to change their own laws, and they cite the legislature’s
laws to prove it. It’s
laughable.
On page 17 and for the rest of the opinion, the
Court explains how Terri’s Law is invalid because the legislature gave
too much of its authority to the Governor.
But the first 16 pages were all about how the legislature didn’t
have that authority to use or to give too much of away. You figure it out. It’s just a waste of paper.
To objective and honest legal scholars, this is
a particularly bad decision. It
doesn’t even attempt to do a good job crafting law. It simply wants Terri dead, and more
importantly, it will kill an innocent woman if the alternative is to abide any
affront at all to the Court’s view of its own supremacy over all things
that occur in the State of
If
you have suggestions for other cases to add to this section, send e-mail to postmaster@courtzero.org