Posted on 10/05/2005 9:49:39 AM PDT by Brilliant
WASHINGTON - Newly installed Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday sharply questioned a lawyer arguing for preservation of Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law, noting the federal government's tough regulation of addictive drugs.
The 50-year-old Roberts, hearing his first major oral argument since succeeding William H. Rehnquist at the helm of the court, seemed skeptical of the Oregon law, and the outcome of this case was as unclear after the argument as before.
At the outset, Roberts laid a barrage of questions on Oregon Senior Assistant Attorney General Robert Atkinson before he could finish his first sentence.
"It's a tough case," noted Justice Anthony Kennedy, a moderate, who with Roberts and others got immersed in one of the most vexing cases of the court's term. Justices pondered whether the federal government has the power to block doctors from helping terminally ill patients end their lives.
As they did so, demonstrators — some carrying signs saying "My Life, My Death, My Decision" — carried their pleas to the courthouse steps.
Inside, retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor seemed ready to back the law allowing dying patients to obtain lethal doses of medication from their doctors.
Although O'Connor could provide the fifth vote in Oregon's favor, she likely will be off the court before the case is decided. A 4-4 tie would be decided by a new justice.
Voters in Oregon have twice endorsed doctor-assisted suicide, but the Bush administration has aggressively challenged the state law, the only one of its kind in the nation.
O'Connor immediately challenged Solicitor General Paul Clement, asking if federal drug laws also prevented doctors from participating in the execution of murderers.
Kennedy said he found it "odd" that the U.S. attorney general determined physician-assisted suicide to be an abuse of drug laws, when the state of Oregon strictly limited how the drugs could be administered and in what cases.
"I don't think it's odd," Clement replied, noting that federal laws regulating drug use have been in place for more than 90 years.
The case was heard by justices touched personally by illness. Three justices — O'Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens — have had cancer, and a fourth — Stephen Breyer — has a spouse who counsels young cancer patients who are dying.
Their longtime colleague, Rehnquist, who once wrote about the "earnest and profound debate" over doctor-assisted suicide, died a month ago after battling untreatable cancer for nearly a year.
In 1997 the court found that the terminally ill have no constitutional right to doctor-assisted suicide. O'Connor provided a key fifth vote in that decision, which left room for state-by-state experimentation.
The appeal is a turf battle of sorts, not a constitutional showdown. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, a favorite among the president's base of religious conservatives, decided in 2001 to pursue doctors who help people die.
Hastening someone's death is an improper use of medication and violates federal drug laws, Ashcroft reasoned, an opposite conclusion than the one reached by Janet Reno, the Clinton administration attorney general.
Oregon filed a lawsuit to defend its law, which took effect in 1997 and has been used by 208 people.
The Supreme Court will decide whether the federal government can trump the state.
"It could be close," said Neil Siegel, a law professor at Duke University and former Supreme Court clerk. "It is a wrenching issue. It's one of the most difficult decisions any family needs to make. There's a lot of discomfort with having the government at any level get involved."
Under Rehnquist's leadership the court had sought to embolden states to set their own rules.
The administration lost at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which said that Ashcroft's "unilateral attempt to regulate general medical practices historically entrusted to state lawmakers interferes with the democratic debate about physician-assisted suicide."
In Oregon, the first assisted-suicide law won narrow approval, just a 51 percent majority, in 1994. An effort to repeal it in 1997 was rejected by 60 percent of voters.
"There is a real human need" for control over one's life, said cancer patient Charlene Andrews of Salem, Ore. "We are terminal and we know when we have a few weeks left. We know when we're unconscious. We know when we're at the end."
The case before the Supreme Court is Gonzales v. Oregon, 04-623.
Generally, I agree with you. The problem arises when congress acts under one of it's enumerated powers in a manner inconsistent with a state created right. The issue there is then whether the act by congress was within the enumerated rights.
What disappointed me about the hearing on the assisted suicide case is that Roberts was not obviously inclined to question whether the commerce clause permitted congress' act. But I don't know whether the briefs have properly posed that issue.
Disappointed because I think court authorized abuse by congress of the commerce clause is the most important single structural problem in the country today and it's looking like Roberts may not even be as strong on the commerce clause as was Rehnquist--and Rehnquist just nibbled around the edges.
It's equivalent. Accessory & conspiracy. Don't matter that you don't pull the trigger yourself.
Making it a crime to help the terminally ill will only push the same thing happening underground again.
It will also help keep Oregon in the red state column in 2008 and help Democrats get elected in 2006 as voters remember just who took out the death with dignity law.
You could say the exact same thing about legalized abortion. And you probably defend the legal murder of millions of babies the same way.
Although how killing sick people helps them is something only a godless liberal would understand.
Ending people's lives is the exact opposite of what doctors are for. Someone has doctors confused with assassins -- hired killers. Not too surprising considering that "doctors" have been murdering innocent babies for years with the judicial tyranny's blessing.
This Oregon law deals with dignity and control of the inevitable, and abortion tragically murders a life before it is lived.
IMHO, this is a huge difference.
I heard that Bobby Schindler was out there with the pro life protesters.
Who is foolish here? Have the people not spoken in Oregon? They want the assisted suicide law. That is democracy in action. Oregon is a sovereign state, with a right to have her own internal laws. The big issue here is whether the federal government will usurp Oregon's authority to have her own internal laws.
Do I think the government should tell people whether or not they can take their own lives? Hell no. That isn't really the issue here though, but I did bring it up. Personally, I don't think that in a free country the government should pass laws prohibiting conduct unless that conduct is harmful to others or creates a substantial and unjustifiable risk of some significant harm to others. I also think though that a government should be able to pass other laws that go beyond this test if that's what the people want. The people in Oregon though want an assisted suicide law. They don't want the feds coming in and telling them how to run their state. I back the people of Oregon on this.
It is hard to argue someone should not control whether they die when they want to instead of a drawn out painful death a month or so later when one supports the implementation of that aspect of old Hammurabi's code of ancient Mesopotamia, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth to kill those one is enraged at o the gurney of justice.
I think that as this provision is written, that is true. But it would not be too hard to rewrite the statute to avoid that. Get doctors out of the equation, and don't use drugs.
As in killing them? Beware the euphemism. Like hypocrisy, it's the tribute vice pays to virtue.
The liberals are laying low because they view the judiciary as being under attack. And they are right. It should be under attack.
You can call it murder if you want, but consider this: It's the state of Oregon which decides how murder is defined under their law. They can abolish the crime of murder altogether if they want.
The point remains that the [assisted suicide] law is working well, people in Oregon like it. Making it a crime to help the terminally ill will only push the same thing happening underground again.
The point remains that the legalized abortion law is working well, people in Oregon like it. Making it a crime to terminate a pregnancy will only push the same thing happening underground again.
Legalized murder either way.
You are a troublemaker. :-)
Death is an inevitable consequence of life. And this issue is about the hows of an inevitable death, not the ifs.
That's why we need a human life amendment to the Constitution, to make it clear that murder is murder from sea to shining sea.
"One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.” — Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943)
Hello, due process of law.
Death is an inevitable consequence of life. And this issue is about the hows of an inevitable death, not the ifs.
We're all gonna die some day. Since death in inevitable, every murder is about the how and when. What's your point?
I agree with you a thousand percent. Perhaps your detractors have not had a personal experience.
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