The Nerd Factor is Still Intact

I think that since this is a blog by a law student, I should at least comment on Gonzalez v. Oregon. The Supreme Court decision about physician-assisted suicide came out last week, probably the last in Sandra Day O'Connor's career, and the first in new Chief Justice Roberts'. Depending on whom you ask, the case is either about an individual's right to die, or it's about the federal government's power with respect to state's rights and their so-called "police power." Police power is just the concept that generally, states have the right to police the people, not the federal government.

The bottom line of the decision is that physician-assisted suicide is still legal in Oregon, and this may cue other states which had been waiting for this to wind its way through the courts to pass similar laws.

What strikes me about the decision is that, in a sense, it is a fulfillment of the last couple of sentences of the last physician-assisted suicide case, Washington v. Glucksberg. That case's bottom line was the opposite: Washington's law prohibiting physician-assisted suicide was held constitutional. The court concluded that there is no "right to die," and distinguished that from a right of privacy which included the right to refuse medical treatment (which one does have the right to do). At the end of the decision, though, the court pointed out that "Throughout the Nation, Americans are engaged in an earnest and profound debate about the morality, legality, and practicality of physician-assisted suicide. Our holding permits this debate to continue, as it should in a democratic society."

Now, with the Oregon decision, they have held to that same premise: this is something that deserves to be publicly debated, and we won't stymie that debate by ruling that physician-assisted suicide is unconstitutional, nor by ruling that there is a constitutional "right to die." It would appear, then, that each state may decide for itself whether physician-assisted suicide should be legal.

I guess what intrigues me about the two decisions together is that it changes, to some extent, how the Supreme Court defines itself. They've decided not to be the final arbiter of the constitutionality of this practice. I wonder, too: is this a reaction to Roe v. Wade? By declaring that a right to privacy existed in the United States, and that such a right included the right to choose to have an abortion, the Court in Roe completely removed the issue from debate in the legislatures, both state and federal. Would the reverse have been better? Or does it divide us even further as a nation to have one set of laws in blue states and another in red ones? Because as it stands now, a Washington resident can just go to Oregon to get the drugs they want to end their life. Is that a "better" answer than a categorical ban or acceptance of physician-assisted suicide?

And you thought I was just getting drunk over here...