Florida's legislature DID write a new law. The courts struck it down. More activism.
Not necessarily, no. I haven't read the Florida statute, nor the Florida State Constitution, nor the ruling of the Supreme Court which struck down the former (I couldn't even tell you its citation), but I presume that the FSC struck the law down for being unconstitutional. Holding a law to be unconstitutional is not, in and of itself, judicial activism - so I'd have to refer to the FSC judgment, which I'd be happy to do, if I could find it.
Actually, I did read the FL Supreme Court ruling. It was struck down on this ground:
That the act, "Terri's Law," violated the FL Consitution's separation of powers clause. The clause gave the Governor the power to demand the appoint a special guardian (his authority to do so expire 15 days after the act was adopted).
http://www.miami.edu/ethics2/schiavo/HouseBill35-E.pdfThe court held, correctly, that giving the Governor this authority, violated the separation of powers.
http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/pub_info/summaries/briefs/04/04-925/Filed_09-23-2004_Opinion.pdf#xml=http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/SCRIPTS/texis.exe/Webinator/search/xml.txt?query=Schiavo+v.+Bush&pr=SupremeCourt&prox=page&rorder=500&rprox=500&rdfreq=500&rwfreq=500&rlead=500&sufs=0&order=r&cq=&id=421f40a027This was nother new, as the opinion cites case from 1968, and including cases from the 80's and 90's. In short the court found that the legislature couldn't remove its
own duty to act through statute, or delegate it to the Governor.
There were due process issues, that Mrs. Schiavo's right to privacy was violated by the law, found by the lower court. The State Supreme Court chose to affirm or deny that ground.
