Sunday
Federalism
At least on it's face, congressional action today re: Terry Schiavo seems unconstitutional. Unless I misunderstood subject matter jurisdiction while taking civil procedure, Congress can't grant Federal Court jurisdiction over matters which Congress can't legislate. So in order to pass the bill they did today, Congress would have to have the Article I power to legislate about matters like Schiavo's case. So I assume congress has to invent something about the commerce clause, like patients will choose to receive medical care in different states based upon the way they treat the decision to stop transmitting nutrition and hydration, and therefore it affects interstate commerce in health care. This seems like a stretch to me, but otherwise Congress's grant of Federal Court review is probably not permissible. Of course, since the only goal is delay, even if the passage was unconstitutional, waiting until it was actually ruled so could be enough to achieve the goals of the people who passed this.
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