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Series

1991

Supreme Court of the United States

Articles

University of Michigan Law School

Cruzan (Nancy)

Articles 1 - 1 of 1

Full-Text Articles in Law

When Is There A Constitutional 'Right To Die'? When Is There No Constitutional 'Right To Live'?, Yale Kamisar Jan 1991

When Is There A Constitutional 'Right To Die'? When Is There No Constitutional 'Right To Live'?, Yale Kamisar

Articles

When I am invited to participate in conferences on the "right to die," I suspect that the organizers of such gatherings expect me to fill what might be called the " 'slippery slope' slot" on the program or, more generally, to articulate the "conservative" position on this controversial matter. These expectations are hardly surprising. The "right to die" is a euphemism for what almost everybody used to call a form of euthanasia-" passive" or "negative" or "indirect" euthanasia-and some thirty years ago, in the course of raising various objections to proposed euthanasia legislation, I advanced the "thin edge of the …