Free Euthanasia Essays: Assisted Suicide and the Supreme Court :: Free Euthanasia Essay

Assisted Suicide and the Supreme Court   The Court upheld two order jurisprudences absolutely prohibiting assisted suicide, stating that capital letter states law does non violate constitutional guarantees of liberty (Washington v. Glucksberg) and that New Yorks similar law does not violate constitutional guarantees of tinct justification (Vacco v. Quill). Oregons law selectively permitting assisted suicide for certain patients had been found by one federal district court to violate equal protection that ruling was not before the Supreme Court. See Lee v. Oregon, 891 F.Supp. 1429 (D. Or. 1995), vacated on other grounds, 107 F.3d 1382 (9th Cir. 1997), cert. denied, 118 S. Ct. 328 (1997). As Chief Justice Rehnquist said in his majority flavor in Glucksberg Lee, of course, is not before us... and we offer no opinion as to the validity of the Lee courts reasoning. In Vacco v. Quill..., however, decided today, we hold that New Yorks assisted-suicide ban does not violate the Eq ual Protection clause. Washington v. Glucksberg, 117 S. Ct. 2258, 2262 n. 7 (1997) (emphasis added). To this day no appellate court in the country has ruled on the constitutionality of a law like Oregons.   The Court also said nothing about assigning this issue to state as opposed to federal jurisdiction. In reviewing the Nations longstanding customs duty against assisted suicide, it cited federal enactments such as the Assisted Suicide Funding Restriction Act of 1997 alongside state laws. Illustrating the governments interest in protecting terminally ill patients, the Court favorably cited an earlier decision upholding the federal Food and Drug Administrations authority to protect the terminally ill, no less than other patients, from life-endangering drugs. Washington v. Glucksberg, 117 S. Ct. at 2272, quoting United States v. Rutherford, 442 U.S. 544, 558 (1979). What the Court did rule is that laws prohibiting assisted suicide (whether state or federal) are constitutionall y valid and serve several important and authentic interests. Excerpts follow   Washington v. Glucksberg The question presented in this case is whether Washingtons prohibition against causing or aiding a suicide offends the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. We hold that it does not...   In almost both State -- indeed, in almost every western democracy -- it is a crime to assist a suicide. The States assisted-suicide bans are not innovations. Rather, they are longstanding expressions of the States payload to the protection and preservation of all human life.