The right to die.

• Author: powell, john a.

The recent controversy over Dr. Jack Kevorkian and his role in assisting twenty patients to end their lives has once again brought to the fore the issue of the right to die. Our society continues to struggle with the question of how and under what circumstances people may end their own lives and when they should be allowed to enlist others to help them in doing so.

This article will suggest that the right to die is rooted in principles that have long antecedents in American law and tradition--privacy, the right to control one's own body, and liberty. It will also suggest that courts and commentators have been too willing to allow an individual's desire to end her life to be outweighed by other considerations or by onerous burdens of proof.

The touchstone in right to die cases should be the autonomy of the individual involved.(1) Courts faced with right to die cases should make every effort to give effect to the wishes of the person whose life is at issue. They should work to identify and eliminate coercion from family, the medical profession, or society generally that may obscure the individual's true wishes.

This is not to say that families and religious communities should play no role in helping an individual to think through the sensitive issues surrounding the right to die. Individuals do not live in isolation, and individuals and groups to whom they have meaningful ties no doubt will and should have some influence over their views about ending their lives. However, after those groups have exerted whatever proper influence they may have, the ultimate decision must remain with the individual herself.

It is also important to note that the state does not stand in the same position as families and smaller communities to which an individual may feel an allegiance. The state does not have the same personalized ties to the individual as these subgroups do, and its interest in an individual's decision about whether to end her life should be far less. The state also has at its disposal the ultimate form of coercion--criminalization--a tool that should be used only in very limited circumstances.

Legal Bases for the Right to Die

Although recognition of the right to die is often presented as a fairly recent legal development, it is rooted in principles that have a long history in American law. The right to die draws on three strains that have worked their way through American law in the past century: the right to control one's own body, the right to privacy, and the due process liberty interest. In Cruzan v. Missouri Department of Health(2) and other cases, the U.S. Supreme Court and state courts have relied on each of these principles to establish that individuals have at least some right to die.

The rights to control one's own body against government intrusions and to protect one's person against general unwanted touching have long been recognized in American law. In 1891 the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Union Pacific Railway Co. v. Botsford,(3) in which a woman passenger sued a railroad company for injuries that she suffered in a fall from an upper berth of a railway car. The railroad sought a court order allowing it to perform a surgical procedure on the woman to determine the extent of her injuries. The Supreme Court, in rejecting the railroad's request, stated that "[n]o right is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded by the common law, than the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others, unless by clear and unquestionable authority of law."(4)

In the medical context, this right to have control over one's own body is closely connected to the doctrine of informed consent. At common law, informed consent "is viewed as generally encompassing the right of a competent individual to refuse medical treatment."(5)

A number of state courts have based the right to die on this principle. In In re Conroy,(6) for example, the New Jersey Supreme Court relied in part on an individual's common law right to control her own body as a basis for upholding a patient's right to refuse medical treatment. The court in Bouvia v. Superior Court of Los Angeles(7) also based a right to refuse medical treatment on the right of an adult to determine what is done to her body.

The right to privacy is also by now well established.(8) In 1965 in Griswold v. Connecticut,(9) the U.S. Supreme Court held that the U.S. Constitution protected a "penumbral" right to privacy, and on that basis the Court invalidated state restrictions on the use and distribution of contraceptives. In Roe v. Wade,(10) the Court held that the right to privacy is "broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy." A plurality of the Court in Moore v. City of East Cleveland(11) relied on the right of privacy to strike down a zoning ordinance that restricted households to members of a traditionally defined nuclear family.

The right to privacy has also provided a basis for the right to die. In In re Quinlan,(12) the New Jersey Supreme Court, in a decision appointing Quinlan's father to be her guardian and authorizing him to terminate her respirator, stated of the right to privacy: "Presumably this right is broad enough to encompass a patient's decision to decline medical treatment under certain circumstances, in much the same way as it is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision to terminate pregnancy under certain conditions."

Finally, courts have based the right to die on a due process liberty interest. The Supreme Court in Cruzan recognized that a competent person has a constitutionally protected liberty interest in refusing unwanted medical treatment.(13) The Court cited a recent decision concerning the unwanted administration of antipsychotic drugs, in which it held that "'[t]he forcible injection of medication into a nonconsenting person's body represents a substantial interference with that person's liberty.'"(14)

The Scope of the Right to Die

Recognizing that individuals have at least some limited right to die begins, rather than ends, the inquiry. This can be seen by starting with what is arguably the "easiest" case for a right to die--if one can speak of any case of this kind as being "easy"--an elderly, completely competent, terminally ill patient with no family or dependents, who is in severe pain and who decides on her own to cease heroic medical measures. In this case the patient's interest in ending her life is at its greatest, and the state's interest in interfering with that decision is the least compelling.

For many courts and commentators, the issues become more difficult when any of these stipulated conditions is altered. What if the individual is not competent to make the decision by herself? What if the individual seeks not the cessation of medical care but affirmative steps to end her life? What if the individual is not terminally ill but simply wants to end her life? What if the individual is not elderly but rather a young parent with children who rely on her for financial and emotional support?

In fact, the debate over the right to die has often followed along these lines. Many people, and many courts, support the right to die in the abstract but cease to do so when the facts depart from the "easy case" scenario.(15) As conditions become more removed from the easy case, some courts and commentators begin to hold that the state's general interest in the preservation of life must prevail over the interests of the individual. Although these factual differences may make the right to die seem less intuitively appealing, none of them provides a principled basis for departing from a commitment to an individual's right to die or is especially helpful in drawing lines between...