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Making Sausage: The Ninth Circuit's Opinion, Carl E. Schneider
Making Sausage: The Ninth Circuit's Opinion, Carl E. Schneider
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As I write, the Supreme Court has just agreed to hear Compassion in Dying v. Washington and Quill v. Vacco, the two cases in which United States circuit courts of appeals held that a state may not constitutionally prohibit physicians from helping a terminally ill person who wishes to commit suicide to do so. These cases have already received lavish comment and criticism, and no doubt the Supreme Court's opinion will garner even more. Reasonably enough, most of this analysis addresses the merits of physician-assisted suicide as social policy. I, here, want to talk about how setting bioethical policy …
The 'Right To Die': On Drawing (And Erasing) Lines, Yale Kamisar
The 'Right To Die': On Drawing (And Erasing) Lines, Yale Kamisar
Articles
Until this year, no state or federal appellate court had ever held that there was a right to assisted suicide no matter how narrow the circumstances or stringent the conditions. In 1996, however, within the span of a single month, two federal courts of appeals so held; in an 8-3 majority of the Ninth Circuit (sitting en banc) in Compassion in Dying v. Washington and a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit in Quill v. Vacco. What heartened proponents of a right to physician-assisted suicide even more, and pleased those resistant to the idea even less, was that the two …
It Started With Quinlan: The Ever Expanding 'Right To Die', Yale Kamisar
It Started With Quinlan: The Ever Expanding 'Right To Die', Yale Kamisar
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Few rallying cries sound more straightforward than the "right to die"-but few are more fuzzy or more misunderstood. This becomes all too evident when comparing the right-to-die decision handed down by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month and the New Jersey Supreme Court's decision in the Karen Ann Quinlan case twenty years ago. At different times, the "right to die" has embraced significantly different rights. On March 6, in Compassion in Dying v. Washington State, the Ninth Circuit held that because a Washington state statute prohibiting assisted suicide prevents physicians from providing assistance to competent, terminally …