It’s too soon, it appears, to guess the fate of Terri Schiavo, whose parents lost a round in federal district court in an effort to have her feeding resumed while her case is heard. They promptly filed an appeal, and there’s no telling how long it will take. It’s not too soon, however, to suggest that Mrs. Schiavo’s death – if it comes in the next few days – will not have been entirely in vain if the constitutional struggle her case has ignited invigorates the liberal half of our politics with an appreciation for federalism and that most glorious of constitutional constructs, the separation of powers.

It’s no small thing, after all, to hear the likes of Congressman Barney Frank or read the likes of the New York Times leaping to the barricades to keep the federal government from interfering in a family matter. There have been thousands of private bills moved through Congress without so much as peep of objection from the left wing (or right wing) camp, though they may be peculiar indeed. Suddenly the federal government has bestirred itself over a matter of interest to fundamentalist Christians and an arc of Orthodox rabbis, and the left-wing federalists are off the bench and up in arms.

No doubt there is a political element to all this. We read the column of the magnificent Peggy Noonan, warning the Republicans of the whirlwind they stand to reap at the polls if, at a time when they control all three branches of government, Terri Schiavo is abandoned. And we have listened to the religious sages and understand the enduring nature of the laws they interpret. But constitutional traditions of federalism and the separation of powers are also worthy of great deference, as the various branches of the government wrestle with the question of what to do about Mrs. Schiavo.

So while everything is still in the balance, let us just say that however the courts and Congress and the executive decide, Mrs. Schiavo seems already to have directed extraordinary attention to the wisdom of the founders, what they were thinking when they drew the idea of separation of powers from the Constitution of Massachusetts. The idea that powers are separated and that our republic is a federation of states turns out to have a very great bearing on the freedom of ordinary individuals. Not only, we hope, when a matter is at stake that is important to liberals but also when the rights of conservatives are inflicted. This is no small achievement for a woman who cannot eat or drink on her own.