Washington v. Glucksberg 1997
| Author | Daniel Brannen, Richard Hanes, Elizabeth Shaw |
| Pages | 531-537 |
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Petitioner: State of Washington
Respondent: Harold Glucksberg
Petitioner's Claim: That Washington's ban on assisting or aiding a suicide does not violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner: William L. Williams
Chief Lawyer for Respondent: Kathryn L. Tucker
Justices for the Court: Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, David H. Souter, John Paul Stevens, Clarence Thomas
Justices Dissenting: None
Date of Decision: June 26, 1997
Decision: Ruled that Washington's ban on assisted suicide is constitutional.
Significance: The Court ruled that assisted suicide is not a fundamental liberty protected by the Constitution. State laws prohibiting assisted suicide are, therefore, constitutional.
By the beginning of the twenty-first century the process of dying had become complicated, involving more choices and actions. Choices about artificial life support in determining how and when an individual dies
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were common. Historically, assisted suicide had not been one of those choices. Assisted suicide, frequently referred to as physician-assisted suicide, means that one individual, generally a doctor, helps another person take his own life. A physician does this by prescribing a lethal (deadly) dose of a drug that the doctor knows will be used by the patient to commit suicide. The patient dies by human action, not by natural causes.
Throughout U.S. history most states prohibited assisted suicide. For example, it has always been a felony (serious) crime to assist a suicide in the state of Washington. Washington's first Territorial Legislature in 1854 outlawed "assisting another in the commission of self murder."
In 1994 four medical physicians from the state of Washington, three gravely ill patients, and Compassion in Dying, a non-profit organization that counsels people considering physician-assisted suicide, decided to challenge the modern-day Washington state law prohibiting physician assisted suicide. The physicians, who occasionally treated terminally ill patients, had said they would assist these patients in ending their lives if
Dr. Jack Kevorkian has been a very vocal supporter and participant in the assisted suicide cause.
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not for Washington's assisted suicide ban. The Washington law provides: "A person is guilty of promoting a suicide attempt when he knowingly causes or aids another person to attempt suicide." The plaintiffs (group bringing the suit) claimed there is "a liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment which extends to a personal choice by a mentally competent terminally ill adult to commit physician assisted suicide." The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution provides that a state may not deprive a person of life, liberty, or property without the due process of law. Due...
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