He's Back

Dr. Jack Kerhorkian is out of jail after 8 years. He was sent to jail partly because the state does not recognize a constitutionally guaranteed right to die.

It is appropriate to ask: So what?

In 2301 we will be covering the Constitution and the conflict that led to the inclusion of the Bill of Rights (topics we will also hit in 2302 when we discuss the judiciary), which the Federalist thought made no sense since it restricted the national government from doing things that it was not allowed to do in the first place--the expressed powers of government--and that did not list all the potential freedoms people may claim as their own.

From the Nehemiah Institute:

"...it is impossible to name every right possessed by individual
human beings. James Wilson commented on this to a meeting
of Pennsylvania citizens. He said, "Enumerate all the rights
of men? I am sure that no gentleman in the late convention
would have attempted such a thing." The founders feared
that naming a few rights of man in a bill of rights would lead
people to believe those were his only rights, in exclusion of
ll others. Noah Webster sarcastically proposed this clause to
complete the list of unalienable rights, "'that Congress shall
never restrain any inhabitant of America from eating and
drinking, at seasonable times, or prevent his lying on his left
side, in a long winter's night, or even on his back, when he is
fatigued by lying on his right." In an attempt to prevent this
misunderstanding, Amendment 9 was inserted into the
Constitution. It says, "The enumeration in the Constitution
of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage
others retained by the people."

Let's apply this to the conflict regarding the right to die. It's not clearly protected in the Constitution, but could it be properly considered to be one of the "certain rights . . . retained by the people?"

How would we know? Is it worth considering whether the right to die is the type of right that the founders might have thought was reasonable, or whether they considered future generations to be capable of determining for themselves whether or not it ought to be?

Is the right to die a right retained by the people? I want my 2301 students to be prepared to discuss this fully in class.