by Ezekiel Emanuel

About the author: Ezekiel Emanuel is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. He is also the author of The Ends of Human Life: Medical Ethics in a Liberal Polity.

In 1996 the Second and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals handed down momentous decisions striking down state laws in New York and Washington that forbid physician-assisted suicide. Although the Second and Ninth Circuit Court cases focus on physician-assisted suicide, and although there are important differences between physician-assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia, the legal reasoning that would justify physician-assisted suicide would almost certainly extend to voluntary euthanasia. The intensity of the debate on both issues will grow during the wait for rulings in 1997 by the Supreme Court, which has accepted the two circuit-court cases for review. [On June 26, 1997, the Supreme Court ruled that...