The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case involving my favorite physician-assisted law, the Oregon Death with Dignity Act. For those of you who don’t know, I wrote a law journal article focusing on the ODDA when I was a 2L (that’s a second-year law student, for the uninitiated). The Bush Administration is hanging its hat on the federal Controlled Substances Act. The drugs used in physician-assisted suicide are barbiturates and controlled substances under the CSA. The Administration is arguing that physicians who prescribe controlled substances for the purposes of facilitating suicide are violating the CSA. I’m not sure how the Court will rule on this. The only other Supreme Court case involving physician-assisted suicide was Glucksburg and the majority, while declaring there is not a Constitutional right to PAS, seemed to leave the issue open for further debate. This Court absolutely adores states’ rights and limited federal powers, so we’ll see if that trend continues.
