Washington V. Glucksberg - Facts

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:

    “Now what I want is facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.”
    —Charles Dickens (1812–1870)

    “In the fevered state of our country, no good can ever result from any attempt to set one of these fiery zealots to rights, either in fact or principle. They are determined as to the facts they will believe, and the opinions on which they will act. Get by them, therefore, as you would by an angry bull; it is not for a man of sense to dispute the road with such an animal.”
    —Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)

    “Experiences in order to be educative must lead out into an expanding world of subject matter, a subject matter of facts or information and of ideas. This condition is satisfied only as the educator views teaching and learning as a continuous process of reconstruction of experience.”
    —John Dewey (1859–1952)