Facts
Dr. Harold Glucksberg, a physician—along with four other physicians, three terminally ill patients, and the non-profit organization, Compassion in Dying, counseling those considering assisted-suicide—challenged Washington state's ban against assisted suicide in the Natural Death Act of 1979. They claimed that assisted suicide was a liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The District Court ruled in favor of Glucksberg, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed. Then, after rehearing the case en banc, the Ninth Circuit reversed the earlier panel and affirmed the District Court's decision. The case was argued before the United States Supreme Court on January 8, 1997. The question presented was whether the protection of the Due Process Clause included a right to commit suicide, and therefore commit suicide with another's assistance.
Read more about this topic: Washington V. Glucksberg
Famous quotes containing the word facts:
“Science is facts. Just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts. But a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.”
—Jules Henri Poincare (1854–1912)
“Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them; and no world composed of merely physical facts can possibly be a world to which ethical propositions apply.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“Birth, and copulation, and death.
That’s all the facts when you come to brass tacks:
Birth, and copulation, and death.
I’ve been born, and once is enough.
You dont remember, but I remember,
Once is enough.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)