In the end, and no matter how much we wish Mrs. Schiavo had never suffered such a horrible accident, we are a nation of laws, and if we are to continue to be so, the pre-existing and well-established federal law…must be applied to her case.

Majority Opinion of the Eleventh United States Circuit Court of Appeals, Page 10

 It is necessary that the prince should know how to color his nature well, and how to be a great hypocrite and dissembler.  For men are so simple, and yield so much in immediate necessity, that the deceiver will never lack dupes.

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter 18

 It is interesting how quickly governing authorities can develop qualms and second thoughts, especially when it comes to overturning any of the recently “well-established” views on morality and euthanasia, even when Congress gives them the legal opportunity to do so.  While I admit that I am not personally aware of the Eleventh Circuit Court’s particular past on these questions, the Supreme Court’s past is clear.  To see the activist court system refusing to act when it has a case before it of this magnitude may well be tellingly odd. 

 For decades now, the power of judicial activism and legal “realism” (the idea that laws are somewhat arbitrary and that judges are only bound by what they think best) has strangled American jurisprudence.  As far back as the 1920, when Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. gave the Congress the right to violate first amendment rights when a “clear and present danger” threatened the United States, the courts have distinguished themselves for taking full opportunity to dictate issues of morality to the American public.  While this has brought some good results (Civil Rights, desegregation) it has also borne horrific fruit (abortion, religious discrimination).

 So, it would seem that this would be a classic opportunity for the courts to exercise their unbridled discretion, and stick up for a person who has manifestly been discriminated against, denied equal rights, and even threatened with death.  A betting man or woman would probably put money down that the courts would intervene quickly with another treatise on the rights of handicapped people. 

 And yet now, suddenly, the courts seem to have developed Constitutional qualms over intervening.  They observe that we are now suddenly a “nation of laws,” implying that somehow the whole fabric of American jurisprudence would somehow come crashing down around our collective ears if they intervene and save Terri’s life, or at least prolong it long enough to allow new tests to be run and further opinions to be sought. 

 Strike down state restrictions on abortion, even though the Constitution gives them no power to do so?  Not a problem.  Interfere with the practice of religious freedom while enforcing a secular humanist creed in the schools?  Absolutely!  Use unratified international opinion and vague elitist moral imperatives to overturn state laws regarding the execution of juvenile murderers?  Go for it!  Save a severely handicapped woman denied proper medical care from a slow death of starvation and dehydration?  Wait a minute!  We’re a “nation of laws”!

 The hypocrisy couldn’t be clearer, and as Machiavelli observed, millions of Americans will fall for the reasoning.  The court quietly neglects to mention that our “laws” are based increasingly on nothing more than mere judicial whim (or a network of whims handed down in the past few decades).  So, when they encounter an opportunity that it pleases them to take advantage of, the court system can rule with abandon (and shaky precedent), while claiming the “intellectual” high ground of recent “advances” in jurisprudence.  If confronted with uncomfortable situations, they can simply lament that we are a “nation of laws,” and the original intent of various laws sadly prevents them from interfering.  Some intents are more original than others, it seems.

 To a certain extent, this should not be surprising.  A judicial system that bases its decisions on what a vague majority of its justices happened to walk out of college thinking or picked up from the New York Times will by definition be arbitrary. 

 The Supreme Court and its brethren have discovered their qualms just in time to conveniently murder Terri Schiavo.  I have a sneaking suspicion that it won’t take long before those qualms are largely forgotten.