Judicial Tyranny in Montana
When a very controversial ruling comes down from our rulers in black robes, it is customary that pending an appeal to the highest court, the decision be stayed--that is suspended--until the final decision from a higher court is in. But Montana's assisted suicide maven, Judge Dorothy McCarter, refused, dismissing a request for a stay of her ruling declaring a constitutional right to assisted suicide. This means because she believes in assisted suicide--unless and until a higher court intervenes--it is now legal for doctors to assist suicides of the terminally ill in Montana and there are no "protective guidelines." (Come to think of it, that's more honest, isn't it?) From the story:
A judge here on Wednesday dismissed a request to freeze her own decision upholding Montana's right to physician-assisted suicide until the state's Supreme Court rules on the matter.I have no idea what will happen now--the former attorney general who opposed the case is now on Montana Supreme Court and has (properly) recused himself.
The decision means that "as of today" Montanans have the right to physician-assisted suicide, said Stephen Hopcraft, a spokesman for Compassion & Choices, a national end-of-life choice group that worked with a now-deceased Billings man who sought to end his life with physician help while battling terminal leukemia.
Helena District Judge Dorothy McCarter ruled in December that the Montana Constitution guarantees both a right to privacy and to human dignity, which includes the right of terminally ill citizens to choose to end their lives with a doctor's help.
This I do know: Judges are becoming too arrogant for our good as a nation. Culture-rending changes in law and morality should not be decided undemocratically by promoting a judge's own ideology through wrenching and twisting constitutional terms to mean things that were not intended when they were enacted. This is especially important because of all the branches of government, the judicial has the fewest checks and balances, thus requiring some humility on the part of judges for the system to work.
Let's hope the Supreme Court issues a stay so that this matter can be heard with the gravity and care it deserves.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 7:29 AM
3 Comments
3 Comments:
Who requested the stay?
The AG
That IS arrogant. Well, what with all that freedom in Montana, naturally the judge who wrote about it would feel entitled to partake of it too. I guess all that freedom would entitle the succeeding attorney general to discontinue to making an issue of it, or even to take a different position, one that agrees with that of the judge. It may be proper, in terms of the bench, for the former AG to recuse himself, but nothing can stop him from being the same person, and I've never been a fan of recusal; I think he ought to be able to continue to speak up; it was known who he was and what his positions were when he was elected or appointed, and irrespective of the merits of the issue of assisted suicide one way or the other, he is the former attorney general and now, as then, his job is to look out for the rights of the people of the state, and if that's "legislating from the bench," it's the way it's supposed to be done, and at least it has foundation behind it.
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