High court nominee tells senator his view on end-of-life case
Washington -- Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman whose case provoked congressional action and a national debate over end-of-life care, became an issue in the Supreme Court confirmation of Judge John Roberts on Tuesday, when a Democratic senator pressed Roberts about whether lawmakers should have intervened.
The senator, Ron Wyden of Oregon, said that Roberts, while not addressing the Schiavo case specifically, made clear during an hourlong meeting that he was displeased with Congress' attempt to force the federal judiciary to overturn a court order withdrawing her feeding tube.
"I asked whether it was constitutional for Congress to intervene in an end-of-life case with a specific remedy," Wyden said, in a telephone interview after the meeting. "His answer was, 'I am concerned with judicial independence. Congress can prescribe standards, but when Congress starts to act like a court and prescribe particular remedies in particular cases, Congress has overstepped its bounds.' "
The answer, which Wyden said his aides wrote down word for word, would seem to put Roberts at odds with leading Republicans in Congress, including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, both of whom led the charge for congressional intervention in the Schiavo case this past spring. DeLay said at the time that the federal judiciary had "run amok."
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/08/10/MNG20E5HER1.DTL
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