Who had the right to rule? Accusations about the abuses of constitutional authority in the Terri Schiavo case get cleared up.(Constitution Corner)

"We will look at an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at Congress and the President." House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas announced after the U.S. Courts failed to intervene on behalf of Terri Schiavo. Congress had just days earlier passed a law purporting to grant federal courts jurisdiction to hear the pleas of Terri's parents to spare the life of their brain-damaged daughter.

There is no doubt that the federal judiciary has in many instances overstepped its proper constitutional boundaries. But was the federal courts' recent refusal to hear the merits of the Schiavo case another example of an "arrogant, ...