Volume 43, Number 13 · August 8, 1996
Sex, Death, and the Courts
By Ronald Dworkin
Compassion in Dying v. State of Washington, 79 F. 3d 790, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit (1996)
Quill v. Vacco, 80 F. 3d 716, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit (1996)
Romer v. Evans, 116 S. Ct. 1620, United States Supreme Court (1996)
Once again American courts are at the center of bitterly divisive moral controversies, this time about euthanasia and homosexuality. Millions of people think that doctors are murderers if they help patients, even those dying slowly in great pain, to kill themselves; the American Medical Association has just confirmed its longstanding opposition to euthanasia, and most states have made assisting suicide a crime. But last March, in a decision that would have seemed incredible a few years ago, the Ninth Circuit of the US Court of Appeals declared that Washington State's law forbidding assisted suicide was unconstitutional, and a month later the Second Circuit held New York's similar law unconstitutional as well. The Supreme Court has not yet indicated whether it will hear appeals from these cases. It is by no means certain that the Court will ultimately confirm them. But if it does, judges will have brought about another social revolution.
Review, 7991 words
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