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De-moralized: Glucksberg in the malaise
1University of San Diego School of Law, USA.
Michigan Law Review
|July 4, 2008
Summary
Ten years after Washington v. Glucksberg and Vacco v. Quill, the Supreme Court’s reasoning on physician-assisted suicide remains flawed. The Court failed to articulate its reliance on a "natural course of life" assumption, hindering clear moral and legal justification.
Area of Science:
- Legal Studies
- Bioethics
- Moral Philosophy
Background:
- The Supreme Court's decisions in Washington v. Glucksberg and Vacco v. Quill addressed physician-assisted suicide.
- These landmark cases, decided a decade prior, represent a significant judicial attempt to navigate complex moral and legal questions surrounding end-of-life choices.
- The enduring significance and justification of the Court's reasoning remain subjects of scholarly debate.
Purpose of the Study:
- To critically analyze the enduring significance of the Glucksberg and Vacco Supreme Court cases on assisted suicide.
- To examine the flaws in the judicial reasoning within these pivotal opinions.
- To explore the underlying normative assumptions that influenced the Court's conclusions.
Main Methods:
- Legal analysis of the Supreme Court's opinions in Washington v. Glucksberg and Vacco v. Quill.
- Examination of the Justices' and lower court judges' reasoning, identifying implicit normative assumptions.
- Philosophical inquiry into the separation of moral reasoning from metaphysical or theological perspectives.
Main Results:
- The Court's reasoning in Glucksberg and Vacco exhibited significant flaws, stemming from an unarticulated reliance on the normative significance of a 'natural course of life'.
- Judicial opinions on both sides of the assisted suicide debate implicitly invoked this concept without explicit acknowledgment.
- The separation of modern moral reasoning from traditional metaphysical or theological frameworks complicates the justification of legal conclusions.
Conclusions:
- The deficiencies in the Glucksberg-Quill rulings highlight the challenges of moral reasoning detached from foundational beliefs.
- The study suggests that the Court's inability to explicitly articulate its normative assumptions led to unsatisfactory legal justifications.
- A potential path forward involves reconsidering formalism or tradition to enhance the acceptability of legal reasoning in complex ethical cases.
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