by Alexander Morgan Capron

About the author: Alexander Morgan Capron is a professor of law and medicine at the University of Southern California. He is a coauthor of the series The Treatise on Health Care Law.

In polls of public opinion, a clear majority of Americans report that they favor making it legal for physicians to prescribe or administer lethal drugs to dying patients who want a quick and painless end to life. Therefore, a lot of people are probably unhappy—or even angry—with the Supreme Court of the United States, which in two unanimous decisions handed down at the end of June [1997] declined to constitutionalize the “right to death with dignity.” They shouldn’t be.

Reversing judgments from the Second and Ninth Circuits, the Court held...