Legal Evils
Donald T. Williams on What Thomas More Might Have Said About Schiavo’s Judges
In a situation like Terri Schiavo’s, the moral thing to do is to err on the side of life, but the response of many in the pro-life movement to the judges who kept ruling against the Schindlers in their attempts to have Terri’s feeding tube reconnected too often lacked a certain nuance.
Were all of these judges in court after appellate court really pro-death? Many probably were. But they all had a responsibility to rule according to the law. The law of the state of Florida gives the decision on treatment in a case where there is no clear written directive to the spouse.
Therefore, a sufficient explanation for the astounding unanimity of so many courts in so many appeals is simply the fact that the judges could read. And the Supreme Court refused to intervene because, however tragic the outcome in this case, there is nothing unconstitutional about that law as such.
The Law as Such
Well, shouldn’t the Law of God trump the laws of men? Yes. This case shows us that the law needs to be changed, that as it stands it does not provide sufficient safeguards to prevent a tragedy like the one that unfolded. But judges cannot overturn a law simply because its application has undesirable results. It has to be unconstitutional.
Okay, but wasn’t Mrs. Schiavo deprived of her constitutional right to life? Yes, in effect. But the law as such did not really do that. It only addressed the question of who has the right to speak for a person whose wishes about treatment are unclear. The Constitution and common sense dictate that the spouse is usually the right person to answer to that question.
Perhaps a legally justifiable way to avoid this tragedy could have been found; I wish it had been found. But my point is simply that it is not as self-evident as many people would apparently like to think that the judges were not just doing their jobs—to interpret the law as it stands—and, for once, doing them correctly.
One might say that the Devil has won in the case of Terri Schiavo. Let us say so. In A Man for All Seasons, Robert Bolt’s play on the martyrdom of Thomas More, More’s son-in-law, William Roper, asks a very pertinent question: “So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law?”
“Yes,” More answers. “What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
Roper avows, “I’d cut down every law in England to do that!” More’s response is worth pondering.
Donald T. Williams is Professor Emeritus of Toccoa Falls College. He stays permanently camped out on the borders between serious scholarship and pastoral ministry, between theology and literature, and between Narnia and Middle-Earth. He is the author of fourteen books, including Answers from Aslan: The Enduring Apologetics of C. S. Lewis (DeWard, 2023). He is a contributing editor of Touchstone.
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