By William Finucane

This was an American tragedy. In many, many more ways than one it was horrible. The legal battles, legislative battles and United States balance of powers were and probably will be centered on this person’s life – and death. Terri Schiavo was her name.

A beautiful young woman has an accident, loses her ability to use her cerebral cortex and is therefore pronounced vegetative. For 15 years she lies, a tube feeding her. And for a large part of those 15 years a war was waged by the woman’s parents and her husband.

They said the woman responded to them, tried to talk, showed signs of human life. They were willing to keep her on the feeding tube forever.

Doctors told the parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, and the husband, Michael Schiavo, that she would stay like this forever. Husband Michael and parents Bob and Mary disagreed utterly. Michael had the power here. He said Terri told him just before she lapsed into the vegetative state that she didn’t want to live on and on in that way and would prefer to die. So Michael said to remove the feeding tube.

Bob and Mary were appalled.

They certainly never heard Terri say she wanted to die. So they fought it through every court in the Florida state system. It got as far as the Supreme Judicial Court, where the highest judges in the United States refused to review the case. Now it changes from an awful but private family problem to a national tragedy. For here the two other branches of government jumped into the battle and started a campaign that could change how the president, the lawmakers and the courts do their business.

Fortunately, that did not happen because the state and federal judges stuck together. What did happen is that the House of Representatives and the Senate decided to pass legislation that would move the legal case controlling Terri’s life from the Florida state courts to the federal courts. Doesn’t sound like much, right? Wrong.

The Congressional action takes the whole structure of government and throws it away. This little law to change the location of Terri’s case and jurisdiction was a monstrous act by the representatives, senators and the executive groups involved. Why did they take this step? Well, they say they wanted to save a life.

This was one of the new conservatives’ major tenets: things should be kept alive – except convicted capital offense criminals, they should be executed; such individuals already go extra fast in Texas.

But in this case, the Terri case, it was assumed the GOP actions were going to swing people to the viewpoint of the Bush Administration and majority in Congress. It was assumed that people would raise such a stir over the courts’ actions as to make the courts change their way. If not, then the people would be behind the legislature and the executive branch when they forced the judiciary to make the change. This was no small court case.

This one could permanently change the way the legislative and executive interacted with the judicial branch. More than settling Terri’s rights, this case could change the powers of the courts. It was going to test the constitutionality of the Supreme Judicial Court and the federal court system. Pushing hard for that new constitutional challenge was House of Representatives majority leader Tom DeLay.

House and Senators stayed up most of the night debating the bill. Finally they got it passed and ran over to the White House. Bush got up and signed this law while in his pajamas. This was timely; had to be signed immediately. Terri’s life depended on it.

So George signed it. It whipped the case away from Florida, where Jeb Bush was governor, to the federal court. Federal judges had it now.

But what did the first federal judges do? They immediately squashed it. It then went to higher federal courts. It was squashed there, too. It went to the highest court in the nation and it, too, squashed it. This, the courts said, was likely an unconstitutional piece of legislation in the first place. That was right. But it does not matter.

The GOP message was clear and simple: the courts were out of control. Well, then, here we have all the judges in the freest nation on earth standing toe to toe against keeping this young woman alive. This was terrible. Also it was wonderful.

Now it was again clear that there is no easy way to make United States courts bend themselves to the wishes of the other branches wishes, or to a sudden shift in the viewpoint of a majority of the people.

Terri was dead now, but the rhetoric was rising.

President George Bush offered his sympathies to Bob and Mary Schindler. He told the two parents that he was attached to a "culture of life." And of course he told it to the nation. Over in the House, GOP leader DeLay was outraged at Terri’s death. "We will look at an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that have thumbed their nose at the Congress and the president," boomed DeLay. But that is just plain stupid.

Later he apologized for blaming federal judges. Yet he said the House Judiciary Committee will study the case, which is of course an implied threat. What makes his comments ludicrous is that DeLay approved the cutoff of medical treatment for his own father some years ago. Sure it wasn’t the same as Terri. DeLay’s dad was being kept alive by machine. Terri was only getting fed through intravenous tubes. That’s a large difference to many people.

But what made DeLay’s comments much more dangerous was that a legislator was challenging – directly – the judiciary. What’s more, he had the backing of Bush. That could mean that will be some interesting legislation emerging in the next few years. But much might be deemed unconstitutional by an independent court. Then again, Bush can change the court with just a few new judges.

If Bush, DeLay and others are successful in vastly changing the makeup of the high court, they will change the nation fundamentally. Courts are not popularity contests.

Judges are supposed to find right or wrong based on law, not on ideology or personal convictions, religiously oriented or not. They do not pledge to prevent deaths or please the president or placate the House or Senate. Instead they swear to uphold the constitution.

Such judges are neither "arrogant, out-of-control or unaccountable," as DeLay charges. And they have not "thumbed their nose at the Congress and the president" as he phrases it. Judges have stuck to the law, despite the Congress and despite the president, and have not bent to political pressure. That is their job.

DeLay probably doesn’t understand that. Neither does Bush.

Polls are now showing that there is much less political heat generated by this then the GOP conservatives hoped there would be, and therefore this has not turned out to be a good case on which the legislative and executive branches can attack the judiciary. But it has exposed the way in which the new conservatives can quickly turn anything into a political issue.