Federalism and Schiavo

Here -- something to add to Steve Bainbridge's excellent post, and also Robert George's remarks -- is a link to a very interesting exchange between law professors Rick Hills and Alan Meese about the Schiavo case.  Hills writes:

As a proponent of "strong" federalism, I have a pretty strong stomach for state experiments in policy-making that might arguably be offensive. Indeed, I think that the essence of being a conservative supporter of federalism is what I call Nagelism (after Bob Nagel's book on federalism): we should be willing to tolerate states' enacting laws that we would find pretty unpalatable on moral and political grounds. Moreover, we should be willing to tolerate state laws that come close to some constitutional line — that arguably violate a reasonable conception of the constitution — especially when the constitutional doctrine turns on difficult empirical or moral judgments about which reasonable people can differ.

Rick