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Political Questions, Judicial Questions, And The Problem Of Washington V. Glucksberg, Carl E. Schneider
Political Questions, Judicial Questions, And The Problem Of Washington V. Glucksberg, Carl E. Schneider
Other Publications
Over a century and a half ago, Alexis de Tocqueville famously said, "Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question." Physician-assisted suicide superbly illustrates Tocqueville's acute observation. For a number of years, assisted suicide was the prototype of a (nonpartisan) political question. Interest groups brought it to public attention. Public discussion of it flourished. Legislatures debated it. Citizens in several states decided in referenda whether to make it legal. Almost suddenly, however, this classic political process was transformed into a judicial one by the startling and strongly stated …
Making Biomedical Policy Through Constitutional Adjudication:The Example Of Physician-Assisted Suicide, Carl E. Scheider
Making Biomedical Policy Through Constitutional Adjudication:The Example Of Physician-Assisted Suicide, Carl E. Scheider
Book Chapters
Throughout most of American history no one would have supposed biomedical policy could or should be made through constitutional adjudication. No one would have thought that the Constitution spoke to biomedical issues, that those issues were questions of federal policy, or that judges were competent to handle them. Today, however, the resurgence of substantive due process has swollen the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment, the distinction between federal and state spheres is tattered, and few statutes escape judicial vetting. Furthermore, Abraham Lincoln's wish that the Constitution should "become the political religion of the nation" has been granted. "We now reverently …