Posted on 10/10/2005 9:31:15 AM PDT by conservativebabe
So, Mr. Chief Justice, will it be us or them?
Given his first case, we'll know soon enough if new Chief Justice John Roberts is with us or them.
It's a control case, a who's-in-charge case. Us or them.
The people of Oregon -- me and you, 'cept they live there and we live here -- have twice affirmed through referenda that if a mentally-with-it dying person wants to skip the last part, it's OK for the doctor to prescribe and the pharmacist to fill a fatal prescription.
The Oregon Legislature, being the servant of the people that it is, did the necessary paperwork in 1997, including the law providing that no criminal or civil penalty could befall the doctors and the pharmacists for their part in carrying out the dying person's wishes. Janet Reno, then attorney general of the United States, said in response to a question from Congress that it was Oregon's business.
All makes sense to most anybody who's sat with a dying relative or friend, and most of us of many years have done so. In such circumstances, I'm sure not gonna be the one saying, "oh, don't be silly ..." if there's a deathbed declaration that the time is now.
But I'm not John Ashcroft or Alberto Gonzales.
When Mr. Ashcroft ascended to the attorney general's office in 2001, he lost no time finding a way to thwart the people of Oregon.
His tool was a routine housekeeping chore assigned the attorney general by the federal Drug Control Act of 1970. The act requires docs and pharmacists to have a federal license to handle drugs; the AG's in charge of the licenses. Mr. Ashcroft parsed the wording of the license requirements, found meaning in phrases Ms. Reno hadn't divined, and announced he'd yank the license of any doctor or pharmacist who followed a patient's dying request.
The people of Oregon appealed and have won through the federal appellate court level. Mr. Gonzales, who's since replaced Mr. Ashcroft, carried the case to the Supreme Court. The arguments were the first heard by the Roberts court.
You should note here that the issue of great import to you and I -- the range of options available to us in the most of trying of exceedingly personal circumstances -- is not being argued, or at best peripherally.
No, the arguments are about what Congress meant with this phrase or that when it wrote the Drug Control Act 35 years ago, and how much control that grants a federal bureaucrat. Paper-shuffling stuff, when core human issues are on the line.
History dictates pessimism.
The question of balancing power between the states and the central government bedeviled us even as we became "us." It is the question that split the revolutionaries of the 1770s into political parties as they turned from guns to pens.
It is the reason they added the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
The Tenth, of course, was the first of the amendments to become a dead letter, done in primarily by Congress's power to regulate commerce among the states, and the Supreme Court's 200-year-willingness to endorse ever broader definitions of "interstate commerce."
The court's also been mostly willing to endorse executive branch power grabs, like the one Mr. Ashcroft's launched.
So, Mr. Chief Justice Roberts, will your court continue the tradition?
Will it be us, or them?
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Footnote: In the eight years of its operation, 208 people have used the alternative offered by the Oregon Death with Dignity law.
Have at it folks.
Why does he make you want to barf?
I think Roberts will be declaring with his vote on this issue whether he is really a strict constructionist or simply an authoritarian conservative. And I'm wondering whether the Court will delay the release of the opinion until after Miers' confirmation hearings.
How about this. You want to die? Do it yourself.
I'm a pro-life as they come, but we've gotten into a lot of problems as a country by trying to take the shorter road. I don't like Euthanasia at all, but I can't find any provision in the constituion forbidding it. If the people of Oregon feel it important for someone to end their life, then the feds should drop it. Conservatives can't have their cake and eat it too.
Mainly because he is a liberal hack. Of course, being from my local paper, I would know that and you would not.
You are right though about Roberts and whether or not he will turn out to be a strict constructionalist.
So, given that about 10 constitutional principles collide in this one, which do you think is the position that a "strict construtionist" should take?
What does that have to do with the seperation of powers and the 10th amendment? Or are you OK with judicial activism so long as you approve of the outcome?
The 10th amendment. This issue is not discussed in any way shape or form in the constitution, and should thus be left to the states.
The federal role in the matter is clearly not in the Constitution. Of course, the new right doesn't seem to mind that much if the judicial activism is in their supposed best interest.
For instance does the state's right to off its citizens override due process and equal protection?
How about this... Watch a loved one slowly wither away from painful and agressive cancer of the liver and colon, have a massive stroke in his last days, come down with pneumonia in the hospital, and stand there helpless knowing that he is in incredible pain and you're not able to do a damn thing about it.
THEN we'll see if you are against humane and painless assisted suicide.
No, but the state is not offing its citizens.
Generally, I agree with you that this case will tell us a lot about Roberts. You do miss one alternative though, the third alternative is minimalist. That is, there are so many years of bad law on the commerce clause, he's not going to try to reverse all of them in his first case.
Even if he is a minimalist, I would like to see some expression of concern about the commerce clause issue. If he's not even concerned about it, he's a clunker and Bush is 0 for 1.
I saw we just starve them to death instead of using drugs. We all know and have learned that being starved to death is a painless, wonderful, calm, and peaceful way to die.
Well okey dokie. If you say so (I mean your statement - this issue is not discussed in any way shape or form in the constitution). I suspect, however, it is not quite so simple as that.
Euthanasia will probably grow into a social event.
Like Terry Schievo (sp)?
No, it is handing out license to private individuals to do it for them.
This law is about able-minded terminally-ill people being allowed to die on their terms.
I so sick of hearing about Terri Schiavo.. the comparison is apples to oranges.
And you would be correct, insofar that the Court has spent the last 50 years reading into the constitution things that aren't there. So yes, this probably clashes with a whole bunch of invented constitutional provisons - just not with any of the provisions the exist in the actual written constitution.
No, it is determining what is and what is not a crime within the borders of its state. Something that has always been the perogative of every state.
Darn it, I have to cut out for a while (parent/teacher conference). I'll look forward to reading more when I return.
THEN we'll see if you are against humane and painless assisted suicide.
Neither you nor your loved one have the guts to resolve this yourselves. You want a doctor to do it for you, lending some respectability to legalized killing.
Actually over 200 years, going back to the Federalist papers that argue about what and what isn't in the constitution.
There are a lot of different schools of construction of the constitution. No legitimate school starts from the premise that it is easy, however. Even the "originalist" Scalia is an example of a first rate mind that finds it hard, and even sometimes can still get it wrong.
Can you invision a scenario where what a state is doing goes against the desires of the nation as a whole and is morally repugnant to most? Does the federal government have a case, or duty even, to step in and stop it?
Just curious.
Actually, all the courts will be deciding on is if doctors can use federally classified drugs to end a life. If the doctors in Oregon want to, I guess they could shoot people, or operate and take out their hearts etc.
I do however worry that allowing assisted suicide will open up doors that we don't want to. What is to stop the assisted portion of it to be limited to ones doctor? And what if your personal doctor says no? Should you be able to doctor shop until you find one who agrees to kill you? Should you be able to employ any person of your choosing to kill you? If not, why not? Is there something special about doctors that makes them the only ones capable of legally killing you?
How long until state ordered killings start?
When the state says that it is lawful for special group x to commit act y, that is license.
A family member can't do it because it is illegal to take a human life. A terminally ill patient who is lying in bed from cancer/stroke/pneumonia doesn't have the strength to eat, drink, or take a crap.. let alone "take care of it" himself.
This law permits the humane ending of a human life under strict guidelines and medical supervision when the patient has decided their suffering is too much to endure.
What?
How about the state's right to allow its citizens to off themselves if they see so fit?
Second, I feverishly wish that 10th ammendment activists could find a firmer reed to hang their case on than doctor assisted suicide.
Not true. Medical Marijuana is just one example that proves you wrong. States can attempt to make it legal but the feds just squash them down.
I am an Oregonian. I voted against physician assisted suicide and would be happy to do so again.
It ought to be overturned for the following reasons.
1. Suicide = insanity. People who want to kill themselves are not mentally or emotionally capable of making such a decisions.
2. There are alternatives to suicide for people who are suffering.
3. The constitution allows Congress to regulate interstate trade. The drugs in question are sold in interstate trade, therefore Congress may regulate their use. If they choose to do so, federal law trumps state law.
4. If people want to kill themselves, they should just do it and not make the State of Oregon a party to their foolishness.
5. Who died and made physicians God?
6. The potential for abuse is just too great. Oregon will be the big vacation spot for the affluent and sick elderly and their greedy relatives in 2010, (the one year period in which the estate tax is phased out under current tax law).
They are not doing that. They are empowering doctors to do it.
The problem with the Oregon law, is they are getting doctors involved and it's going to have impact all around the country. I don't understand what's libertarian about people who want to kill themselves forcing the government to get involved. How many terminally ill people were prosecuted for suicide before this law went into effect. But now we are manipulated into a position were doctors get to decide which patients are qualified to live. (which they eventually do under these laws) When universal healthcare gets here, gov't doctors get to decide if I'm worthy of life, and you call that liberty?
It's a matter of perspective. If you view the government as granting us our freedoms, then you are correct. I come at it with the perspective that all the government does is limit freedom. From that point of view, something not being illegal is not the same as a license.
I can see the Tenth Amendment issue here, Phantom: And it ain't "chopped liver."
On the other hand, it seems wrong for a would-be suicide to recruit accomplices. It's bad enough to want to off one's self in the first place; but to make others a party to the act makes it worse.
I find something horrific in the statement that "death with dignity" can be accomplished by means of suicide. People who believe such must be very weak and scared. Bottom line, they are afraid of life -- of living though a last painful illness.
It will be interesting (how's that for an understatement?!) to see how SCOTUS rules on this one.
Are the Feds acting in accordance with the original intent of the Commerce Clause, in you view?
The constitution does not speak to suicide, so neither should the federal gvt.
Why not just pass a constitutional amendment rather than hope that the judges legislate your (and my) morality on the bench. Are we only against liberal activist judges?
Sure, so let's pass a constitutional amendment.
"So, given that about 10 constitutional principles collide in this one,..."
Which ones? I'm no scholar, but I don't see where the constitution addresses this at all.
I can.
Prostitution. It's legal in some parts of Nevada.
It's illegal in the vast majority of the rest of the nation.
It's even repugnant to many, maybe even a majority.
The federal government doesn't do anything about that. It's left to the states.
I was speaking more to the decision to do it, not the actual act. The people make the decision and the state allows doctors to go along with that decision. Does the doctor actually have to do anything beyond writing the prescription (i.e. does the patient administer the drug themselves?)
Right, and they did so wrongly. At least, however, there is a strong case that the drug trade truly affects interstate commerce. Unlike doctor assisted suicide.
Every State that has passed a law legalizing medical marijuana has legal medical marijuana. The Feds can enforce the Federal law if they wish, but the State laws stand.
"Should you be able to doctor shop until you find one who agrees to kill you? Should you be able to employ any person of your choosing to kill you?"
Yes, and Yes.
Then that 'God-given right' should be enumerated as a constitutional ammendment. End runs are what the Left does and we shouldn't follow their lead.
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