At Law: Death and the Court (original) (raw)
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JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 1997
This article analyzes judicial determinations on the "right to die" from Quinlan to Cruzan, Glucksberg, and Vacco. The body of law known as right-to-die cases extends ordinary treatment refusal doctrine to end-of-life decisions. The courts, having affirmed a right to refuse life-sustaining treatment, held that certain categorical distinctions that had been drawn lacked a rational basis. No rational distinction could be made between competent vs incompetent patients, withholding vs withdrawing treatment, and ordinary vs extraordinary treatment. The courts, however, had persistently affirmed one categorical distinction: between withdrawing life-sustaining treament on the one hand and active euthanasia or physician-assisted dying on the other. In Washington v Glucksberg and Vacco v Quill, the Supreme Court unanimously held that physician-assisted suicide is not a fundamental liberty interest protected by the Constitution. Notably, five members of the Court wrote or joined in concurring opinions that took a more liberal view. The Court powerfully approved aggressive palliation of pain. The Supreme Court, hinting that it would find state legalization of physician-assisted suicide constitutional, invited the nation to pursue an earnest debate on physician assistance in the dying process.
No Constitutional Right to Physician-Assisted Suicide?
The Cambridge Law Journal, 1997
reappraisal. And both illustrate the need for greater flexibility. For the question is not whether English courts should or should not exclude foreign intellectual property claims, but when they should do so. It is tempting to see the answer in the doctrine of forum non conveniens, the American solution (London Film Productions Ltd. v. Intercontinental Communications Inc. 580 F. Supp. 47 (1984)). Indeed, the cases since Tyburn rely less on the antique distinction between local and transitory actions than on the inappropriateness of adjudicating foreign intellectual property rights (see Plastus Kreativ AB v.