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Baird , U. California , U. We have also assumed, and strongly suggested, that the Due Process Clause protects the traditional right to refuse unwanted lifesaving medical treatment.

Cruzan , U. But we "have always been reluctant to expand the concept of substantive due process because guideposts for responsible decisionmaking in this unchartered area are scarce and open-ended. We must therefore "exercise the utmost care whenever we are asked to break new ground in this field," lest the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause be subtly transformed into the policy preferences of the members of this Court. Our established method of substantive-due-process analysis has two primary features: First, we have regularly observed that the Due Process Clause specially protects those fundamental rights and liberties which are, objectively, "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition," and "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty," such that "neither liberty nor justice would exist if they were sacrificed.

As we stated recently in Flores , the Fourteenth Amendment "forbids the government to infringe. Ullman , would largely abandon this restrained methodology, and instead ask "whether [Washington's] statute sets up one of those 'arbitrary impositions' or 'purposeless restraints' at odds with the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

This approach tends to rein in the subjective elements that are necessarily present in due-process judicial review. In addition, by establishing a threshold requirement--that a challenged state action implicate a fundamental right--before requiring more than a reasonable relation to a legitimate state interest to justify the action, it avoids the need for complex balancing of competing interests in every case. Turning to the claim at issue here, the Court of Appeals stated that "properly analyzed, the first issue to be resolved is whether there is a liberty interest in determining the time and manner of one's death," or, in other words, "is there a right to die?

The Washington statute at issue in this case prohibits "aiding another person to attempt suicide," and, thus, the question before us is whether the "liberty" specially protected by the Due Process Clause includes a right to commit suicide which itself includes a right to assistance in doing so. We now inquire whether this asserted right has any place in our Nation's traditions. Here, as discussed above, we are confronted with a consistent and almost universal tradition that has long rejected the asserted right, and continues explicitly to reject it today, even for terminally ill, mentally competent adults.

To hold for respondents, we would have to reverse centuries of legal doctrine and practice, and strike down the considered policy choice of almost every State.

Respondents contend that in Cruzan we "acknowledged that competent, dying persons have the right to direct the removal of life-sustaining medical treatment and thus hasten death," and that "the constitutional principle behind recognizing the patient's liberty to direct the withdrawal of artificial life support applies at least as strongly to the choice to hasten impending death by consuming lethal medication.

Given the common-law rule that forced medication was a battery, and the long legal tradition protecting the decision to refuse unwanted medical treatment, our assumption was entirely consistent with this Nation's history and constitutional traditions. The decision to commit suicide with the assistance of another may be just as personal and profound as the decision to refuse unwanted medical treatment, but it has never enjoyed similar legal protection.

Indeed, the two acts are widely and reasonably regarded as quite distinct. In Cruzan itself, we recognized that most States outlawed assisted suicide--and even more do today--and we certainly gave no intimation that the right to refuse unwanted medical treatment could be somehow transmuted into a right to assistance in committing suicide.

The history of the law's treatment of assisted suicide in this country has been and continues to be one of the rejection of nearly all efforts to permit it. That being the case, our decisions lead us to conclude that the asserted "right" to assistance in committing suicide is not a fundamental liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause.

The Constitution also requires, however, that Washington's assisted-suicide ban be rationally related to legitimate government interests. This requirement is unquestionably met here. As the court below recognized, Washington's assisted-suicide ban implicates a number of state interests.

It is so ordered. Death will be different for each of us. For many, the last days will be spent in physical pain and perhaps the despair that accompanies physical deterioration and a loss of control of basic bodily and mental functions.

Some will seek medication to alleviate that pain and other symptoms. The Court frames the issue in this case as whether the Due Process Clause of the Constitution protects a "right to commit suicide which itself includes a right to assistance in doing so,"and concludes that our Nation's history, legal traditions, and practices do not support the existence of such a right.

I join the Court's opinions because I agree that there is no generalized right to "commit suicide. Nonetheless, although States moved away from Blackstone's treatment of suicide, courts continued to condemn it as a grave public wrong.

Berkshire Life Ins. Chapman, 87 A. Jones, Fla. That suicide remained a grievous, though nonfelonious, wrong is confirmed by the fact that colonial and early state legislatures and courts did not retreat from prohibiting assisting suicide.

Swift, in his early 19th century treatise on the laws of Connecticut, stated that " [i]f one counsels another to commit suicide, and the other by reason of the advice kills himself, the advisor is guilty of murder as principal. This was the well established common-law view, see In re Joseph G. Mink, Mass. Bowen, 13 Mass. Commonwealth, Va. And the prohibitions against assisting suicide never contained exceptions for those who were near death. Rather, " [t]he life of those to whom life ha[d] become a burden-of those who [were] hopelessly diseased or fatally wounded-nay, even the lives of criminals condemned to death, [were] under the protection of law, equally as the lives of those who [were] in the full tide of life's enjoyment, and anxious to continue to live.

State, 23 Ohio St. The earliest American statute explicitly to outlaw assisting suicide was enacted in New York in , Act of Dec. Laws 19 codified at 2 N. Marzen Between and , a New York commission led by Dudley Field drafted a criminal code that prohibited "aiding'' a suicide and, specifically, "furnish[ing] another person with any deadly weapon or poisonous drug, knowing that such person intends to use such weapon or drug in taking his own life.

By the time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, it was a crime in most States to assist a suicide. See Cruzan, supra, at , S. The Field Penal Code was adopted in the Dakota Territory in , in New York in , and its language served as a model for several other western States' statutes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Marzen , , California, for example, codified its assisted-suicide prohibition in , using language similar to the Field Code's.

Though deeply rooted, the States' assisted-suicide bans have in recent years been reexamined and, generally, reaffirmed. Because of advances in medicine and technology, Americans today are increasingly likely to die in institutions, from chronic illnesses. Public concern and democratic action are therefore sharply focused on how best to protect dignity and independence at the end of life, with the result that there have been many significant changes in state laws and in the attitudes these laws reflect.

Many States, for example, now permit "living wills,'' surrogate health-care decisionmaking, and the withdrawal or refusal of life-sustaining medical treatment. See Vacco v. Quill, U. Kevorkian, Mich. At the same time, however, voters and legislators continue for the most part to reaffirm their States' prohibitions on assisting suicide.

The Washington statute at issue in this case, Wash. Four years later, Washington passed its Natural Death Act, which specifically stated that the "withholding or withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment. Laws, ch. In , Washington voters rejected a ballot initiative which, had it passed, would have permitted a form of physician-assisted suicide. California voters rejected an assisted-suicide initiative similar to Washington's in On the other hand, in , voters in Oregon enacted, also through ballot initiative, that State's "Death With Dignity Act,'' which legalized physician-assisted suicide for competent, terminally ill adults.

See Iowa Code Ann. Also, on April 30, , President Clinton signed the Federal Assisted Suicide Funding Restriction Act of , which prohibits the use of federal funds in support of physician-assisted suicide. Thus, the States are currently engaged in serious, thoughtful examinations of physician-assisted suicide and other similar issues.

For example, New York State's Task Force on Life and the Law-an ongoing, blue-ribbon commission composed of doctors, ethicists, lawyers, religious leaders, and interested laymen-was convened in and commissioned with "a broad mandate to recommend public policy on issues raised by medical advances. Over the past decade, the Task Force has recommended laws relating to end-of-life decisions, surrogate pregnancy, and organ donation. After studying physician-assisted suicide, however, the Task Force unanimously concluded that " [l]egalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia would pose profound risks to many individuals who are ill and vulnerable.

Attitudes toward suicide itself have changed since Bracton, but our laws have consistently condemned, and continue to prohibit, assisting suicide. Despite changes in medical technology and notwithstanding an increased emphasis on the importance of end-of-life decisionmaking, we have not retreated from this prohibition. Against this backdrop of history, tradition, and practice, we now turn to respondents' constitutional claim.

The Due Process Clause guarantees more than fair process, and the "liberty'' it protects includes more than the absence of physical restraint. Collins v. Harker Heights, U. Williams, U. The Clause also provides heightened protection against government interference with certain fundamental rights and liberty interests. Reno v. In a long line of cases, we have held that, in addition to the specific freedoms protected by the Bill of Rights, the "liberty'' specially protected by the Due Process Clause includes the rights to marry, Loving v.

Virginia, U. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, U. Nebraska, U. Society of Sisters, U. Connecticut, U. Baird, U. California, U. We have also assumed, and strongly suggested, that the Due Process Clause protects the traditional right to refuse unwanted lifesaving medical treatment. But we "ha[ve] always been reluctant to expand the concept of substantive due process because guideposts for responsible decisionmaking in this unchartered area are scarce and open-ended.

By extending constitutional protection to an asserted right or liberty interest, we, to a great extent, place the matter outside the arena of public debate and legislative action. We must therefore "exercise the utmost care whenever we are asked to break new ground in this field,'' ibid, lest the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause be subtly transformed into the policy preferences of the members of this Court, Moore, U.

Our established method of substantive-due-process analysis has two primary features: First, we have regularly observed that the Due Process Clause specially protects those fundamental rights and liberties which are, objectively, "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition,'' id.

Massachusetts, U. Second, we have required in substantive-due-process cases a "careful description'' of the asserted fundamental liberty interest. Flores, supra, at , S. Our Nation's history, legal traditions, and practices thus provide the crucial "guideposts for responsible decisionmaking,'' Collins, supra, at , S. As we stated recently in Flores, the Fourteenth Amendment "forbids the government to infringe. This approach tends to rein in the subjective elements that are necessarily present in due-process judicial review.

In addition, by establishing a threshold requirement-that a challenged state action implicate a fundamental right-before requiring more than a reasonable relation to a legitimate state interest to justify the action, it avoids the need for complex balancing of competing interests in every case. Turning to the claim at issue here, the Court of Appeals stated that " [p]roperly analyzed, the first issue to be resolved is whether there is a liberty interest in determining the time and manner of one's death,'' 79 F.

Similarly, respondents assert a "liberty to choose how to die'' and a right to "control of one's final days,'' Brief for Respondents 7, and describe the asserted liberty as "the right to choose a humane, dignified death,'' id. As noted above, we have a tradition of carefully formulating the interest at stake in substantive-due-process cases.

For example, although Cruzan is often described as a "right to die'' case, see 79 F. The Washington statute at issue in this case prohibits "aid[ing] another person to attempt suicide,'' Wash. We now inquire whether this asserted right has any place in our Nation's traditions.

To hold for respondents, we would have to reverse centuries of legal doctrine and practice, and strike down the considered policy choice of almost every State. See Jackman v.

Rosenbaum Co. Respondents contend, however, that the liberty interest they assert is consistent with this Court's substantive-due-process line of cases, if not with this Nation's history and practice. Pointing to Casey and Cruzan, respondents read our jurisprudence in this area as reflecting a general tradition of "self-sovereignty,'' Brief of Respondents 12, and as teaching that the "liberty'' protected by the Due Process Clause includes "basic and intimate exercises of personal autonomy,'' id.

According to respondents, our liberty jurisprudence, and the broad, individualistic principles it reflects, protects the "liberty of competent, terminally ill adults to make end-of-life decisions free of undue government interference.

The question presented in this case, however, is whether the protections of the Due Process Clause include a right to commit suicide with another's assistance. With this "careful description'' of respondents' claim in mind, we turn to Casey and Cruzan.

In Cruzan, we considered whether Nancy Beth Cruzan, who had been severely injured in an automobile accident and was in a persistive vegetative state, "ha[d] a right under the United States Constitution which would require the hospital to withdraw life-sustaining treatment'' at her parents' request.

We began with the observation that " [a]t common law, even the touching of one person by another without consent and without legal justification was a battery. We then discussed the related rule that "informed consent is generally required for medical treatment.

After reviewing a long line of relevant state cases, we concluded that "the common-law doctrine of informed consent is viewed as generally encompassing the right of a competent individual to refuse medical treatment. Next, we reviewed our own cases on the subject, and stated that " [t]he principle that a competent person has a constitutionally protected liberty interest in refusing unwanted medical treatment may be inferred from our prior decisions.

Therefore, "for purposes of [that] case, we assume[d] that the United States Constitution would grant a competent person a constitutionally protected right to refuse lifesaving hydration and nutrition.

We concluded that, notwithstanding this right, the Constitution permitted Missouri to require clear and convincing evidence of an incompetent patient's wishes concerning the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment.

Respondents contend that in Cruzan we "acknowledged that competent, dying persons have the right to direct the removal of life-sustaining medical treatment and thus hasten death,'' Brief for Respondents 23, and that "the constitutional principle behind recognizing the patient's liberty to direct the withdrawal of artificial life support applies at least as strongly to the choice to hasten impending death by consuming lethal medication,'' id.

Similarly, the Court of Appeals concluded that " Cruzan, by recognizing a liberty interest that includes the refusal of artificial provision of life-sustaining food and water, necessarily recognize[d] a liberty interest in hastening one's own death. The right assumed in Cruzan, however, was not simply deduced from abstract concepts of personal autonomy.

Given the common-law rule that forced medication was a battery, and the long legal tradition protecting the decision to refuse unwanted medical treatment, our assumption was entirely consistent with this Nation's history and constitutional traditions. The decision to commit suicide with the assistance of another may be just as personal and profound as the decision to refuse unwanted medical treatment, but it has never enjoyed similar legal protection.

Indeed, the two acts are widely and reasonably regarded as quite distinct. In Cruzan itself, we recognized that most States outlawed assisted suicide-and even more do today-and we certainly gave no intimation that the right to refuse unwanted medical treatment could be somehow transmuted into a right to assistance in committing suicide.

Respondents also rely on Casey. There, the Court's opinion concluded that "the essential holding of Roe v. Wade should be retained and once again reaffirmed. We held, first, that a woman has a right, before her fetus is viable, to an abortion "without undue interference from the State''; second, that States may restrict post-viability abortions, so long as exceptions are made to protect a woman's life and health; and third, that the State has legitimate interests throughout a pregnancy in protecting the health of the woman and the life of the unborn child.

In reaching this conclusion, the opinion discussed in some detail this Court's substantive-due-process tradition of interpreting the Due Process Clause to protect certain fundamental rights and "personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education,'' and noted that many of those rights and liberties "involv[e] the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime.

The Court of Appeals, like the District Court, found Casey ""highly instructive''' and ""almost prescriptive''' for determining ""what liberty interest may inhere in a terminally ill person's choice to commit suicide''':. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State. Brief for Respondents By choosing this language, the Court's opinion in Casey described, in a general way and in light of our prior cases, those personal activities and decisions that this Court has identified as so deeply rooted in our history and traditions, or so fundamental to our concept of constitutionally ordered liberty, that they are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.

That many of the rights and liberties protected by the Due Process Clause sound in personal autonomy does not warrant the sweeping conclusion that any and all important, intimate, and personal decisions are so protected, San Antonio Independent School Dist. The history of the law's treatment of assisted suicide in this country has been and continues to be one of the rejection of nearly all efforts to permit it. That being the case, our decisions lead us to conclude that the asserted "right'' to assistance in committing suicide is not a fundamental liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause.

The Constitution also requires, however, that Washington's assisted-suicide ban be rationally related to legitimate government interests. See Heller v. This requirement is unquestionably met here. As the court below recognized, 79 F.

First, Washington has an "unqualified interest in the preservation of human life. The State's prohibition on assisted suicide, like all homicide laws, both reflects and advances its commitment to this interest. See id. It reflects the gravity with which we view the decision to take one's own life or the life of another, and our reluctance to encourage or promote these decisions.

Respondents admit that " [t]he State has a real interest in preserving the lives of those who can still contribute to society and enjoy life. The Court of Appeals also recognized Washington's interest in protecting life, but held that the "weight'' of this interest depends on the "medical condition and the wishes of the person whose life is at stake. Washington, however, has rejected this sliding-scale approach and, through its assisted-suicide ban, insists that all persons' lives, from beginning to end, regardless of physical or mental condition, are under the full protection of the law.

See United States v. Rutherford, U. Congress could reasonably have determined to protect the terminally ill, no less than other patients, from the vast range of self-styled panaceas that inventive minds can devise''.

As we have previously affirmed, the States "may properly decline to make judgments about the "quality' of life that a particular individual may enjoy,'' Cruzan, U. This remains true, as Cruzan makes clear, even for those who are near death.

Relatedly, all admit that suicide is a serious public-health problem, especially among persons in otherwise vulnerable groups. See Washington State Dept. The State has an interest in preventing suicide, and in studying, identifying, and treating its causes. See 79 F. Those who attempt suicide-terminally ill or not-often suffer from depression or other mental disorders.

Print ; cf. Research indicates, however, that many people who request physician-assisted suicide withdraw that request if their depression and pain are treated. Hendin, Seduced by Death: Doctors, Patients and the Dutch Cure suicidal, terminally ill patients "usually respond well to treatment for depressive illness and pain medication and are then grateful to be alive'' ; New York Task Force The New York Task Force, however, expressed its concern that, because depression is difficult to diagnose, physicians and medical professionals often fail to respond adequately to seriously ill patients' needs.

Thus, legal physician-assisted suicide could make it more difficult for the State to protect depressed or mentally ill persons, or those who are suffering from untreated pain, from suicidal impulses. The State also has an interest in protecting the integrity and ethics of the medical profession. In contrast to the Court of Appeals' conclusion that "the integrity of the medical profession would [not] be threatened in any way by [physician-assisted suicide],'' 79 F.

And physician-assisted suicide could, it is argued, undermine the trust that is essential to the doctor-patient relationship by blurring the time-honored line between healing and harming. Leon R. Kass "The patient's trust in the doctor's whole-hearted devotion to his best interests will be hard to sustain''. Next, the State has an interest in protecting vulnerable groups-including the poor, the elderly, and disabled persons-from abuse, neglect, and mistakes.

The Court of Appeals dismissed the State's concern that disadvantaged persons might be pressured into physician-assisted suicide as "ludicrous on its face.

We have recognized, however, the real risk of subtle coercion and undue influence in end-of-life situations. Similarly, the New York Task Force warned that " [l]egalizing physician-assisted suicide would pose profound risks to many individuals who are ill and vulnerable.

The risk of harm is greatest for the many individuals in our society whose autonomy and well-being are already compromised by poverty, lack of access to good medical care, advanced age, or membership in a stigmatized social group. If physician-assisted suicide were permitted, many might resort to it to spare their families the substantial financial burden of end-of-life health-care costs. The State's interest here goes beyond protecting the vulnerable from coercion; it extends to protecting disabled and terminally ill people from prejudice, negative and inaccurate stereotypes, and "societal indifference.

The State's assisted-suicide ban reflects and reinforces its policy that the lives of terminally ill, disabled, and elderly people must be no less valued than the lives of the young and healthy, and that a seriously disabled person's suicidal impulses should be interpreted and treated the same way as anyone else's.

Canady, at 9, 20 discussing prejudice toward the disabled and the negative messages euthanasia and assisted suicide send to handicapped patients. Finally, the State may fear that permitting assisted suicide will start it down the path to voluntary and perhaps even involuntary euthanasia. The Court of Appeals struck down Washington's assisted-suicide ban only "as applied to competent, terminally ill adults who wish to hasten their deaths by obtaining medication prescribed by their doctors.

Washington insists, however, that the impact of the court's decision will not and cannot be so limited. Brief for Petitioners If suicide is protected as a matter of constitutional right, it is argued, "every man and woman in the United States must enjoy it.

The Court of Appeals' decision, and its expansive reasoning, provide ample support for the State's concerns. The court noted, for example, that the "decision of a duly appointed surrogate decision maker is for all legal purposes the decision of the patient himself,'' 79 F. Thus, it turns out that what is couched as a limited right to "physician-assisted suicide'' is likely, in effect, a much broader license, which could prove extremely difficult to police and contain. This concern is further supported by evidence about the practice of euthanasia in the Netherlands.

The Dutch government's own study revealed that in , there were 2, cases of voluntary euthanasia defined as "the deliberate termination of another's life at his request'' , cases of assisted suicide, and more than 1, cases of euthanasia without an explicit request.

In addition to these latter 1, cases, the study found an additional 4, cases where physicians administered lethal morphine overdoses without the patients' explicit consent.

Canady, at citing Dutch study. This study suggests that, despite the existence of various reporting procedures, euthanasia in the Netherlands has not been limited to competent, terminally ill adults who are enduring physical suffering, and that regulation of the practice may not have prevented abuses in cases involving vulnerable persons, including severely disabled neonates and elderly persons suffering from dementia.

The New York Task Force, citing the Dutch experience, observed that "assisted suicide and euthanasia are closely linked,'' New York Task Force , and concluded that the "risk of. Washington, like most other States, reasonably ensures against this risk by banning, rather than regulating, assisting suicide. We need not weigh exactingly the relative strengths of these various interests. They are unquestionably important and legitimate, and Washington's ban on assisted suicide is at least reasonably related to their promotion and protection.

We therefore hold that Wash. Throughout the Nation, Americans are engaged in an earnest and profound debate about the morality, legality, and practicality of physician-assisted suicide. Our holding permits this debate to continue, as it should in a democratic society. The decision of the en banc Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. Three terminally ill individuals and four physicians who sometimes treat terminally ill patients brought this challenge to the Washington statute making it a crime "knowingly.

The question is whether the statute sets up one of those "arbitrary impositions'' or "purposeless restraints'' at odds with the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Poe v. Ullman, U. I conclude that the statute's application to the doctors has not been shown to be unconstitutional, but I write separately to give my reasons for analyzing the substantive due process claims as I do, and for rejecting this one.

ICC, U. The case reaches us on an order granting summary judgment, and we must take as true the undisputed allegations that each of the patients was mentally competent and terminally ill, and that each made a knowing and voluntary choice to ask a doctor to prescribe "medications.

The State does not dispute that each faced a passage to death more agonizing both mentally and physically, and more protracted over time, than death by suicide with a physician's help, or that each would have chosen such a suicide for the sake of personal dignity, apart even from relief from pain. Each doctor in this case claims to encounter patients like the original plaintiffs who have died, that is, mentally competent, terminally ill, and seeking medical help in "the voluntary self-termination of life.

While there may be no unanimity on the physician's professional obligation in such circumstances, I accept here respondents' representation that providing such patients with prescriptions for drugs that go beyond pain relief to hasten death would, in these circumstances, be consistent with standards of medical practice. Hence, I take it to be true, as respondents say, that the Washington statute prevents the exercise of a physician's "best professional judgment to prescribe medications to [such] patients in dosages that would enable them to act to hasten their own deaths.

In their brief to this Court, the doctors claim not that they ought to have a right generally to hasten patients' imminent deaths, but only to help patients who have made "personal decisions regarding their own bodies, medical care, and, fundamentally, the future course of their lives,'' Brief for Respondents 12, and who have concluded responsibly and with substantial justification that the brief and anguished remainders of their lives have lost virtually all value to them.

Respondents fully embrace the notion that the State must be free to impose reasonable regulations on such physician assistance to ensure that the patients they assist are indeed among the competent and terminally ill and that each has made a free and informed choice in seeking to obtain and use a fatal drug.

In response, the State argues that the interest asserted by the doctors is beyond constitutional recognition because it has no deep roots in our history and traditions. But even aside from that, without disputing that the patients here were competent and terminally ill, the State insists that recognizing the legitimacy of doctors' assistance of their patients as contemplated here would entail a number of adverse consequences that the Washington Legislature was entitled to forestall.

The nub of this part of the State's argument is not that such patients are constitutionally undeserving of relief on their own account, but that any attempt to confine a right of physician assistance to the circumstances presented by these doctors is likely to fail.

First, the State argues that the right could not be confined to the terminally ill. Even assuming a fixed definition of that term, the State observes that it is not always possible to say with certainty how long a person may live.

It asserts that " [t]here is no principled basis on which [the right] can be limited to the prescription of medication for terminally ill patients to administer to themselves'' when the right's justifying principle is as broad as ""merciful termination of suffering.

Second, the State argues that the right could not be confined to the mentally competent, observing that a person's competence cannot always be assessed with certainty, Brief for Petitioners 34, and suggesting further that no principled distinction is possible between a competent patient acting independently and a patient acting through a duly appointed and competent surrogate, id. Next, according to the State, such a right might entail a right to or at least merge in practice into "other forms of life-ending assistance,'' such as euthanasia.

Finally, the State believes that a right to physician assistance could not easily be distinguished from a right to assistance from others, such as friends, family, and other health-care workers. The State thus argues that recognition of the substantive due process right at issue here would jeopardize the lives of others outside the class defined by the doctors' claim, creating risks of irresponsible suicides and euthanasia, whose dangers are concededly within the State's authority to address.

When the physicians claim that the Washington law deprives them of a right falling within the scope of liberty that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees against denial without due process of law, 3 they are not claiming some sort of procedural defect in the process through which the statute has been enacted or is administered.

Their claim, rather, is that the State has no substantively adequate justification for barring the assistance sought by the patient and sought to be offered by the physician. Thus, we are dealing with a claim to one of those rights sometimes described as rights of substantive due process and sometimes as unenumerated rights, in view of the breadth and indeterminacy of the "due process'' serving as the claim's textual basis.

The doctors accordingly arouse the skepticism of those who find the Due Process Clause an unduly vague or oxymoronic warrant for judicial review of substantive state law, just as they also invoke two centuries of American constitutional practice in recognizing unenumerated, substantive limits on governmental action.

Although this practice has neither rested on any single textual basis nor expressed a consistent theory or, before Poe v. Ullman, a much articulated one , a brief overview of its history is instructive on two counts. The persistence of substantive due process in our cases points to the legitimacy of the modern justification for such judicial review found in Justice Harlan's dissent in Poe, 4 on which I will dwell further on, while the acknowledged failures of some of these cases point with caution to the difficulty raised by the present claim.

Before the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment , substantive constitutional review resting on a theory of unenumerated rights occurred largely in the state courts applying state constitutions that commonly contained either due process clauses like that of the Fifth Amendment and later the Fourteenth or the textual antecedents of such clauses, repeating Magna Carta's guarantee of "the law of the land.

Thus, a Connecticut court approved a statute legitimating a class of previous illegitimate marriages, as falling within the terms of the "social compact,'' while making clear its power to review constitutionality in those terms. Goshen v. Stonington, 4 Conn. In the same period, a specialized court of equity, created under a Tennessee statute solely to hear cases brought by the state bank against its debtors, found its own authorization unconstitutional as "partial'' legislation violating the state constitution's "law of the land'' clause.

Bank of the State v. Cooper, 10 Tenn. And the middle of the 19th century brought the famous Wynehamer case, invalidating a statute purporting to render possession of liquor immediately illegal except when kept for narrow, specified purposes, the state court finding the statute inconsistent with the state's due process clause.

Wynehamer v. People, 13 N. The statute was deemed an excessive threat to the "fundamental rights of the citizen'' to property. See generally, E. Corwin, Liberty Against Government discussing substantive due process in the state courts before the Civil War ; T. Even in this early period, however, this Court anticipated the developments that would presage both the Civil War and the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment , by making it clear on several occasions that it too had no doubt of the judiciary's power to strike down legislation that conflicted with important but unenumerated principles of American government.

In most such instances, after declaring its power to invalidate what it might find inconsistent with rights of liberty and property, the Court nevertheless went on to uphold the legislative acts under review. Leland, 2 Pet. Bull, 3 Dall. Coryell, 6 F. But in Fletcher v.

Death with Dignity. This law has just been passed in Colorado in the past election and will. Dutch vs. American Euthanasia The Dutch take their euthanasia seriously. The Dutch government has resubmitted its proposal for formally legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia, while modifying its controversial provision allowing euthanasia for children.

When first proposed to Parliament over a year ago, the bill allowed for cases where children from 12 to 16 years old could request and receive euthanasia "against the wishes of their parents.

So making euthanasia illegal or states banding it is violating our constitutional rights. For example In the Washington vs. Glucksberg case, Dr. Home Page Research Dr. Harold Glucksberg vs. The State of Washington Essays. The State of Washington 'Choosing death before dishonor is seen by some philosophers and ethicists as a rational reason to commit suicide. Washington Otherwise acknowledged as Compassion In Dying v.