Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit chimes in on Ann Althouse, etc.
ANN ALTHOUSE:
"I watched a number of the cable TV news analysis shows last night (and in the last few days), and I am appalled at the failure even to raise the most basic legal point about the statute Congress passed. Time after time, I heard people -- like Fred Barnes on Fox News's "Special Report" -- say that everyone knows that Congress intended to give Terri Schiavo a de novo hearing, in which the federal court would disregard everything the state courts have done, and that the federal courts ignored the statute that Congress went to such extraordinary lengths to pass. . . .
Regardless of what people like Barnes think Congress intended, the federal courts were given a statutory text to follow, and the fact is they followed that text. Yet the TV commentators -- at least what I heard -- never made this most basic point. . . . The federal courts in no way flouted the federal statute. It's irrelevant that Congress managed to make people think it was doing things that it never put in the statutory text."
Actually, I made that point on Kudlow last night, noting that Congress enacted a procedural statute, in the hopes of getting a substantive result. But this point keeps getting missed. It's also worth noting -- as Ann does -- that the parents' case was simply quite weak on the law. I thought conservatives were supposed to care about the law, but I see a lot of people being as result-oriented as, well, liberals are supposed to be . . . .
UPDATE: Jonathan Adler observes:
"Congress knew how to require a stay -- indeed a prior draft of the legislation included language that would have required a stay -- but such language was not in the final statute. Quoting one, ten or twenty legislators doesn't change this fact. The 11th Circuit panel was required to review the district court's decision for abuse of discretion -- a very demanding standard -- and the majority properly exercised that obligation. This does not mean there was no injustice in the Florida courts, only that there was not a federal constitutional violation."
I'm quite astonished to hear people who call themselves conservatives arguing, in effect, that Congress and the federal courts have a free-ranging charter to correct any injustice, anywhere, regardless of the Constitution. And yet my email runneth over with just those kinds of comments. And arguing that "it's okay because liberals do it too" doesn't undercut my point that conservatives are acting like liberals here. It makes it.
Every system generates unjust results. This may (or may not) be one of them, but there's no reason to think that Congressional action on an individual legal case is likely to improve things. My lefty law professors used to think that more procedures were always better, and seemed willing to tie the Constitution and the rules of procedure into knots to get to the result they liked. Even they have learned, to a degree, that more procedure doesn't necessarily lead to better outcomes overall. And conservatives, as opposed to bleeding-heart liberals, are supposed to understand that there's more at stake than the outcome in individual cases, and that there are real costs to putting whatever thumb-pressure on the scales it takes to get to a desired outcome in each case. Or so I thought. |
