The decision to commit suicide with the assistance of another may be just as personal and profound as the decision to refuse unwanted medical treatment, but it has never enjoyed similar legal protection.
Indeed, the two acts are widely and reasonably regarded as quite distinct. In Cruzan itself, we recognized that most States outlawed assisted suicide--and even more do today--and we certainly gave no intimation that the right to refuse unwanted medical treatment could be somehow transmuted into a right to assistance in committing suicide.
The history of the law's treatment of assisted suicide in this country has been and continues to be one of the rejection of nearly all efforts to permit it. That being the case, our decisions lead us to conclude that the asserted "right" to assistance in committing suicide is not a fundamental liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause. The Constitution also requires, however, that Washington's assisted-suicide ban be rationally related to legitimate government interests.
This requirement is unquestionably met here. As the court below recognized, Washington's assisted-suicide ban implicates a number of state interests. It is so ordered. Death will be different for each of us. For many, the last days will be spent in physical pain and perhaps the despair that accompanies physical deterioration and a loss of control of basic bodily and mental functions. Some will seek medication to alleviate that pain and other symptoms.
The Court frames the issue in this case as whether the Due Process Clause of the Constitution protects a "right to commit suicide which itself includes a right to assistance in doing so,"and concludes that our Nation's history, legal traditions, and practices do not support the existence of such a right.
I join the Court's opinions because I agree that there is no generalized right to "commit suicide. I see no need to reach that question in the context of the facial challenges to the New York and Washington laws at issue here The Court ends its opinion with the important observation that our holding today is fully consistent with a continuation of the vigorous debate about the "morality, legality, and practicality of physician-assisted suicide" in a democratic society.
I write separately to make it clear that there is also room for further debate about the limits that the Constitution places on the power of the States to punish the practice Today, the Court decides that Washington's statute prohibiting assisted suicide is not invalid "on its face," that is to say, in all or most cases in which it might be applied. That holding, however, does not foreclose the possibility that some applications of the statute might well be invalid I conclude that the statute's application to the doctors has not been shown to be unconstitutional, but I write separately to give my reasons for analyzing the substantive due process claims as I do, and for rejecting this one After the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, with its guarantee of due process protection against the States, interpretation of the words "liberty" and "property" as used in due process clauses became a sustained enterprise, with the Court generally describing the due process criterion in converse terms of reasonableness or arbitrariness.
This approach calls for a court to assess the relative "weights" or dignities of the contending interests, and to this extent the judicial method is familiar to the common law. Common law method is subject, however, to two important constraints in the hands of a court engaged in substantive due process review. First, such a court is bound to confine the values that it recognizes to those truly deserving constitutional stature, either to those expressed in constitutional text, or those exemplified by "the traditions from which [the Nation] developed," or revealed by contrast with "the traditions from which it broke.
The weighing or valuing of contending interests in this sphere is only the first step, forming the basis for determining whether the statute in question falls inside or outside the zone of what is reasonable in the way it resolves the conflict between the interests of state and individual.
It is only when the legislation's justifying principle, critically valued, is so far from being commensurate with the individual interest as to be arbitrarily or pointlessly applied that the statute must give way. Only if this standard points against the statute can the individual claimant be said to have a constitutional right I join her separate opinion, except insofar as it joins the majority. And I concur in the judgments.
I shall briefly explain how I differ from the Court. I agree with the Court in Vacco v. Quill, ante, that the articulated state interests justify the distinction drawn between physician assisted suicide and withdrawal of life-support. They asserted a liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause, which extended to a personal choice by a mentally competent, terminally ill adult to commit physician-assisted suicide.
The United States Supreme Court held that history, legal traditions, and practice supported criminalizing assisted suicide. The Court held that the assisted-suicide ban was rationally related to a legitimate government interest because Washington sought to preserve human life and also uphold the integrity and ethics of the medical profession.
Additionally, Washington's statute sought to protect vulnerable groups, such as the poor, elderly, and disabled from abuse, neglect, and mistakes. A Washington state statute enacted in provided that a person was guilty of the felony of promoting a suicide attempt when the person knowingly caused or aided another person to attempt suicide.
In , an action was brought in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington by several plaintiffs, among whom were 1 physicians who occasionally treated terminally ill, suffering patients, and 2 individuals who were then in the terminal phases of serious and painful illnesses.
The plaintiffs, asserting the existence of a liberty interest protected by the Federal Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment which extended to a personal choice by a mentally competent, terminally ill adult to commit physician-assisted suicide, sought a declaratory judgment that the Washington statute was unconstitutional on its face.
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