On p. 200 of KTR we discuss the right to die issue and point out that the Supreme Court had agreed to hear a federal challenge to an Oregon law allowing doctors to prescribe (but not to administer) medication to assist terminally ill patients (diagnosed with less than six months to live) to end their lives.
The Court's decision in Gonzales vs. Oregon was announced Tuesday morning; by a 6-3 vote the justices upheld the Oregon law, ruling that the Controlled Substances Act under which then-Attorney General John Ashcroft challenged Oregon's law didn't empower the federal government to strike down the state law. Dissenting were Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia and Thomas.
Although we discuss this case in the Civil Liberties chapter under the heading "The Right to Die," it is important to note that the Court didn't decide the case on civil liberties grounds. Rather, it issued a narrow ruling, focused on the federalism issue of whether the congressional statue designed to control drug trafficking and abuse by depriving doctors of their licenses if they used them for illegitimate purposes empowered a member of the executive branch to use that statute to override the state assisted suicide law. It held that the power of physicians to write prescriptions intended to allow a terminally ill patient to end his or her own life was a legitimate medical purpose under the law. The dissenters said it was not.
Out of all the coverage this morning, the New York Times does the best job explaining that this is truly a narrow ruling, not an endorsement of the right to die, which the Court had also refused to endorse in an earlier case. (Timothy Egan and Adam Liptak, Fraught Issue, but Narrow Ruling in Oregon Assisted Suicide Case, 1/18/06.) They quote the Governor Theodore R. Kulongoski of Oregon, who said that the impact of the case will be to allow states to try out policies that their citizens want without forcing them to fit a standardized national mold. He said, "The U.S. Supreme Court recognized the delicate balance between our federal system and the right of the states to be the crucibles for new ideas and new ways to meet the changing needs of their citizens." We discuss this role of the states as "laboratories of democracy" throughout the KTR text, but primarily on pp 126, 139, 596-97, and 695-96.
Other papers are not so circumspect. The Washington Post's headline declares "Justices Uphold Oregon Assisted-Suicide Law: In a Blow to Administration, Ruling Paves Way for Other States to Follow Suit" (1/18/06), but as the LA Times article makes clear, that's not necessarily the case. (Jordan Rau, Is California Next in Line? 1/18/06.)
Things to think about:
Why would the Court sidestep the right to die issue in favor of ruling on a much more narrow legal issue?
Why would Roberts, Scalia and Thomas, arguably the three most conservative justices on the Court, at least until Alito is confirmed, dissent in this case? Conservatives would be more likely to take the "pro-life" position here, but why would they also sign on to an endorsement of executive power over the states?
The 6-3 ruling gives the majority a good margin here. How would the result be likely to differ if Alito had already replaced Justice O'Connor, who voted with the majority? What does that say about the future ideological balance on the Court?