Back by Popular Demand: Tyranny of the Majority

The scene in front of the Hospice House Woodside last week was something out of a Fellini film. On the orders of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, troopers rushed into the hospice and whisked away a helpless Terri Schiavo, taking her to a hospital where she again would be fed through a tube, against the wishes of her husband. The ambulance passed through wildly cheering crowds as the word spread that their side now had possession of the "body politic."

The framers of the Constitution spoke a great deal about the "body politic," the right of the represented to govern themselves in a democratic society. Though this term has taken on a literal meaning in the struggle over the body of Terri Schiavo, the Florida controversy has returned this country to a debate that raged in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. On one side, advocates have denounced the decisions in favor of Schaivo's husband as "judicial tyranny." However, the Legislature and governor's intervention in this one case raises the specter of a greater evil identified by the framers: majoritarian terror.

Left in a "persistent vegetative state" after her heart stopped in 1990, Schiavo has become the personification of this classic fight between the authority of the courts and the will of the people. Her husband, Michael, has been battling her parents for six years to allow her to die. Her feeding tube was removed by court order Oct. 15, but the Florida Legislature on Oct. 20 gave the governor the power to order it reinserted.

Advocates of keeping her on the feeding tube have criticized the courts for failing to yield to the overwhelming view of the public that the tube should not have been removed and that Schiavo's husband was not acting in her best interests. Pro-life activist Randall Terry of Operation Rescue was ecstatic on CNN, proclaiming that finally "an executive and a legislative body stood up to judicial tyranny." Of course, when legislatures have passed bills on subjects like abortion rights or same-sex unions, Terry has denounced them as "godless" and led calls for court challenges.

The framers of the Constitution understood that the test of any democratic system was its ability to restrain, not satisfy, the majority. Much of our Constitution is designed to combat the evil of majoritarian terror -- the tyranny of the majority over those who are unpopular or underrepresented. For this reason, the framers rejected a pure democratic model and instead embraced the model of a republic containing the doctrine of separation of powers, including an independent judiciary.