by Ronald A. Lindsay

About the author: Ronald A. Lindsay is an attorney in Washington, D.C. He prepared an amicus brief for the Supreme Court on behalf of the Council for Secular Humanism, arguing in favor of the right to assisted suicide.

In October 1996, the Supreme Court announced that it will review decisions by the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second and Ninth Circuits that have held that a state’s blanket prohibition of assisted suicide for terminally ill patients is inconsistent with the Constitution. (The Second Circuit ruled on a New York statute; the Ninth Circuit ruled on a Washington statute.) The Supreme Court will hear arguments in these critical cases early in 1997, and its rulings will be issued at the end of the Court’s term, in late June or...