FOR 30 years Joan Lefkow awoke to a cup of coffee from her husband, a moment when they “reopened what we called the endless conversation of marriage”.

It is different now. She wakes alone, “to an open book that I was reading in an effort to banish the memories of 5.30pm on the day our world changed for ever”.

That was 11 weeks ago, when an unemployed electrician with a grudge against Mrs Lefkow, a US federal judge who had dismissed his malpractice suit, broke into her home in Chicago.

Bart Ross had come to kill her. She was not yet home, so he shot her husband, Michael, 64, and her mother, Donna Humphrey, 89, who was visiting from Colorado.

Mrs Lefkow appeared on Capitol Hill this week to enter the war that has erupted in recent weeks between the Religious Right and the judiciary. She warned critics that they were playing with fire and urged them to cool their “truly dangerous” rhetoric aimed at judges.

“Respect for the rule of law and the civility of the courts requires acceptance of the results the law ordains,” she told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“If it comes to pass that attacks on judges are perpetuated because each person feels free in deciding for themselves what is right or just, then chaos and anarchy will not be far behind.”

Mrs Lefkow was careful not to blame the deaths of her husband and mother directly on politicians. They were killed weeks before the death of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman whose feeding tube was removed on the orders of a court.

Mrs Schiavo’s death produced a declaration of war from Republican leaders and raised the intensity of rhetoric from the Right to new levels. But Mrs Lefkow made clear that unless figures such as Tom DeLay, the Republican majority leader in the House of Representatives, toned down their language, further attacks were inevitable. She did not mention Mr DeLay by name, but alluded to him while appealing for support from political leaders.

Judges carried out their duties on behalf of all Americans, not to satisfy particular factions, she said.

“We don’t invite the cases. The cases come to us. These decisions can be very difficult. Such as whether a decision by the next of kin to remove a feeding tube from a living human being should or should not be honoured. We call this winning and losing but the terms are inadequate. This is never a game.”

Mr DeLay, the immensely powerful House Majority Leader, outraged Democrats and many judges when he used the death of Mrs Schiavo two months ago to threaten judges who delivered unpopular or controversial decisions with recrimination.

Speaking on the floor of the House, Mr DeLay said: “This loss happened because our legal system did not protect the people who need protection most, and that will change. The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behaviour.”

He has retracted his language but not the sentiment, and is pursuing ways of curbing judges’ powers in such cases.

Mrs Lefkow did mention by name Pat Robertson, the founder of the Christian Coalition and a prominent figure on the Right. Mr Robertson recently criticised the federal courts, saying that they were more of a threat to American values than al-Qaeda.

He said: “The gradual erosion of the consensus that has held our country together is probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings.”

Mrs Lefkow pleaded with senators to stand up to such critics, to “exercise leadership and use your voices to support the vital role of judges in sustaining a society based on the rule of law instead of rights being defined by might”. She urged them to “publicly and persistently repudiate gratuitous attacks on the judiciary, such as the recent statement of Pat Robertson”.

“Even though we cannot prove a cause-and-effect relationship between rhetorical attacks on judges in general and violent acts of vengeance by a particular litigant,” she added, “the fostering of disrespect for judges can only encourage those who are on the edge or on the fringe to exact revenge on a judge who displeases them.”

With considerable irony, while Mrs Lefkow was giving her evidence, Bill Frist, the Republican Senate Majority Leader, was opening the long-awaited debate on the rights of the minority party to filibuster a president’s judicial nominees.

Mr Frist accused Democrats of wanting to “kill, to defeat, to assassinate” President Bush’s nominees. Dick Durbin, the Democrat Chief Whip, hurried to the floor and urged Mr Frist to choose his words more carefully.

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