Washington v. Glucksberg

[ASSISTED SUICIDE - DUE PROCESS CLAUSE OF FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT] WASHINGTON V. GLUCKSBERG - UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT - 521 U.S. 702 (1997) RULE OF LAW: The right to physician-assisted suicide is not a constitutionally protected liberty interest under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. 1) FACTS AND RELEVANT BACKGROUND - [material facts] Under Washington state law, it is a crime to knowingly cause or aid another person to attempt suicide. Glucksberg (plaintiff), a Washington physician, along with other Washington physicians brought suit against the State of Washington (defendants), alleging that Glucksberg frequently treated terminally-ill patients and would have assisted those patients in ending their lives if not for Washington’s ban on assisted suicide. Glucksberg brought suit in federal district court seeking a declaration that the Washington state law violated a liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. [procedural history] he district court found that the Washington law violated both the Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the court of appeals affirmed. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari. 2) LEGAL ISSUE 3) HOLDING (REHNQUIST) May a state’s prohibit physician-assisted suicide without violating the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution? Yes. In almost every state, bans exist on physician-assisted suicide, representing those states’ commitment to the protection and preservation of all human life. 4) RATIONALE (i) HISTORIC ARGUMENT AND PROCESS TO ESTABLISH IF A RIGHT IS FUNDAMENTAL OR NOT Section 1: No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. HISTORIC / TRADITION ARGUMENT : is a right to assisted suicide deeply rooted in American history and implicit in the concept of ordained liberty? NO 1) Assisted suicide has been traditionally banned as opposed to the right to protect human life. 2) Many other states in the world have similar bans. Even though many states have expanded their laws to permit living wills and surrogate decision-making regarding the withdrawal of life-sustaining medical treatment, voters and state legislatures alike consistently uphold bans on assisted-suicide. THE ANALYSIS TO INVESTIGATE A FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT: There is a two-step analysis for determining whether a fundamental right exists under the Due Process Clause: (1) whether the right is objectively, deeply rooted in U.S. history and tradition and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty such that neither liberty nor justice would exist if the right is sacrificed; and (2) whether a careful description exists of the fundamental liberty interest. Applying these principles to the issue of physicianassisted suicide, the Nation’s history and tradition has almost uniformly rejected the existence of the right, and most states continue to explicitly reject it in the present day (ii) PRECEDENT: DOES CRUZAN GOVERN? [NO] GLUCKSBERG POSITION: BASICALLY, the right to refuse life-prolonging artificial treatment asserted in CRUZAN has the same connotation than the right of assisted suicide. COURT’S REPLY: The right to assisted suicide is distinguishable from the right of competent persons to remove unwanted lifesustaining treatment recognized in Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Dept. of Health . In Cruzan, the Court reasoned that the right to be free from unwanted medical procedures is long established in national traditions upholding bodily integrity and protecting against battery, even by physicians. In contrast, the right to assisted suicide shares no such historical support in national traditions. The asserted “right” to assistance in committing suicide is not a fundamental liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause. (iii) STATES’ INTERESTS IN PROTECTING LIFE Washington has several legitimate interests in the ban: the preservation of human life; the protection of vulnerable groups, including the poor, elderly, and disabled from abuse, neglect, and mistakes; and the discouragement of state policy from following a path that might eventually lead to involuntary euthanasia. Hence the Washington legislature acted rationally in banning assisted suicide in furtherance of these legitimate objectives. The Washington law is constitutional and the decision of the court of appeals is reversed. NOTES FROM CONCURRENCE. (O’CONNOR): There is no generalized right under the Constitution to commit suicide. As such, there is no reason for the Court to consider the narrower question urged by Glucksberg of whether a mentally competent person experiencing great suffering has a constitutionally cognizable interest in controlling the circumstances of his or her imminent death. A state-sponsored ban on the practice is necessary to prevent a terminally ill person, whose decision-making abilities are probably overwhelmed by pain and suffering, from making a decision to end his life. Additionally, the difficulty associated with determining when an illness is truly terminal further justifies the ban. (BREYER): the majority is not required to decide whether the asserted liberty interest is “fundamental” because many state laws already permit physicians to provide terminally-ill patients in extreme pain with powerful pain-relieving drugs despite the fact that those drugs risk killing patients. If the state law at issue directly prohibited palliative care and the administration of drugs as needed to avoid pain at the end of life (along with their accompanying risk of death), then the law’s impact would be more directly at issue. The courts would need to consider the legality of a law that essentially could bring about physician-assisted suicide. 1 Note: there are other concurring opinions. 2