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Full-Text Articles in Law
A History Of The Law Of Assisted Dying In The United States, Alan Meisel
A History Of The Law Of Assisted Dying In The United States, Alan Meisel
Articles
The slow growth in the number of states that have enacted legislation to permit what is often referred to as “death with dignity” legislation—and more frequently referred to popularly as “physician assisted suicide” laws—has begun to accelerate in the past few years since the enactment of the first such statute in Oregon in 1994.
Like much other social reform legislation, there is a long history behind it. In this case, the history in the United States dates back at least to the latter part of the nineteenth century. Not until the 1980s, however, did these efforts gain any traction in …
Ending-Life Decisions: Some Disability Perspectives, Mary Crossley
Ending-Life Decisions: Some Disability Perspectives, Mary Crossley
Articles
In the forty years since Quinlan, disability has been present in the conversation within medicine, bioethics, and law about the acceptability of death-hastening medical decisions, but it has at times been viewed as an interloper, an uninvited guest to the party, or perhaps the guest whom the host was obliged to invite, but whose presence was not entirely welcomed. Notwithstanding some short-term reversals and counter-currents, the steady arc of end-of-life law during the past four decades has been towards liberalization of ending-life choices by and for patients who are severely compromised or near the end of their lives. During …
Antecedent Law And Ethics Of Aid In Dying, Alan Meisel
Antecedent Law And Ethics Of Aid In Dying, Alan Meisel
Articles
Scholarly discussion of physician aid in dying – physicians actively aiding patients in ending their lives – has noticeably increased in recent years. While conversations and examinations of end-of-life treatment have been ongoing for decades, the antecedent law and ethics of aid in dying that have developed in the United States have recently moved into the spotlight. In this essay, written for a symposium at Quinnipiac School of Law, the author takes his audience on a brief journey through the history of end-of-life decision-making in the U.S., beginning with the early days of the Karen Quinlan case in 1976 and …
Concluding Thoughts: Bioethics In The Language Of The Law, Carl E. Schneider
Concluding Thoughts: Bioethics In The Language Of The Law, Carl E. Schneider
Book Chapters
What happens when the language of the law becomes a vulgar tongue? What happens, more particularly, when parties to bioethical disputes are obliged to borrow in their daily controversies, the ideas, and even the language, peculiar to judicial proceedings? How suited are the habits and tastes and thus the language of the judicial magistrate to the political, and more particularly, the bioethical, questions of our time? We must ask these questions because, as the incomparable Tocqueville foresaw, it has become American practice to resolve political—and moral—questions into judicial questions. We now reverently refer to the Supreme Court as the great …
Ancient Answers To Modern Questions: Death, Dying And Organ Transplants - A Jewish Law Perspective, Stephen J. Werber
Ancient Answers To Modern Questions: Death, Dying And Organ Transplants - A Jewish Law Perspective, Stephen J. Werber
Law Faculty Articles and Essays
Core values of the Jewish heritage are life and family, not death. An interpretation of Halachah which permits a broad definition of passive euthanasia without lapsing into acceptance of active euthanasia or its more evil cousin, assisted suicide, is consistent with these values. Also consistent with these values and the Jewish tradition is a modern definition of death which recognizes advances in medical technology that were beyond the knowledge or imagination of those who created the vast body of Rabbinic law. This approach will not only ease the suffering of families, it will allow organ transplants to save the lives …