Law at the End of Life

by Schneider, Carl E.

• ISBN13: 9780472111572
• ISBN10: 0472111574
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-10-01
• Publisher: Univ of Michigan Pr

Summary

We live in a world in which courts crucially shape public policy through constitutional adjudication. This is a book written for that world. It brings together a group of distinguished scholars from many disciplines to examine the Supreme Court's recent decision that statutes prohibiting doctors from helping their patients commit suicide may be constitutional. It offers a guide to that decision and to the larger issues it raises for citizens and scholars alike. It asks everyone's first question: What does the decision mean for today and tomorrow? It asks the lawyer's question: Is the Supreme Court's reasoning clear and convincing? It asks the doctor's question: How will the decision affect the decisions physicians make with their patients? It asks the ethicist's question: Will the decision conduce to wise and just decisions at the end of life? It asks the historian's question: How are we to understand the Court's work in light of our disturbing national experience with euthanasia? Ultimately, it asks the questions citizens need to ask in our new world: Is constitutional adjudication a good way to make public policy? Are courts well equipped--with experience, with doctrine, with wisdom--to make good policy? What role should courts have in making policy in a democracy? Has the Supreme Court made good public policy? What is the right policy for law at the end of life? Carl Schneider is Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School.

Table of Contents

Introduction Political Questions, Judicial Questions, and the Problem of Washington v Glucksberg	1	(10)
Carl E. Schneider
Part I Glucksberg in Context
The Road to Glucksberg	11	(14)
Carl E . Schneider
Part II Reading Glucksberg
Ambivalent Unanimity: An Analysis of the Supreme Court's Holding	25	(31)
Sonia M. Suter
On the Meaning and Impact of the Physician-Assisted Suicide Cases	56	(27)
Yale Kamisar
Part III Judicial Principle and Clinical Practice
The Supreme Court and End-of-Life Care: Principled Distinctions or Slippery Slope?	83	(18)
Rebecca Dresser
Physician-Assisted Suicide in the Courts: Moral Equivalence, Double Effect, and Clinical Practice	101	(24)
Howard Brody
Part IV Glucksberg and the Institutions of Public Policy
A Part of the Main? The Physician-Assisted Suicide Cases and Comparative Law Methodology in the United States Supreme Court	125	(39)
Christopher McCrudden
Making Biomedical Policy through Constitutional Adjudication: The Example of Physician-Assisted Suicide	164	(57)
Carl E. Schneider
Part V Formulating Principles and Making Policy
Eugenic Euthanasia in Early Twentieth-Century American and Medically Assisted Suicide Today: Differences and Similarities	221	(18)
Martin S. Pernick
Assisted Suicide and the Challenge of Individually Determined Collective Rationality	239	(36)
Peter J. Hammer
From Story of Law: Euthanasia and Authenticity	275	(16)
Arthur W. Frank
Concluding Thoughts: Bioethics in the Language of the Law	291	(10)
Carl E . Schneider
Appendixes Compassion in Dying v. Washington	301	(56)
Washington v. Glucksberg	343	(14)
Contributors	357	(2)
Index	359