Now let me see. We have two interpretations of the SCOTUS rulings.
One is from the leading text on the legal and ethical position of the Principle of Double Effect…
The other interpretation is your personal opinion of it.
I will leave it to others to apply the appropriate weightings to those interpretations.
Let me add a further cite:
Theor Med Bioeth. 2004;25(1):61-74.
The double life of double effect.
McIntyre A1.
Author information
Abstract
The U.S. Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Vacco v. Quill assumes that the principle of double effect explains the permissibility of hastening death in the context of ordinary palliative care and in extraordinary cases in which painkilling drugs have failed to relieve especially intractable suffering and terminal sedation has been adopted as a last resort. The traditional doctrine of double effect, understood as providing a prohibition on instrumental harming as opposed to incidental harming or harming as a side effect, must be distinguished from other ways in which the claim that a result is not intended might be offered as part of a justification for it. Although double effect might appropriately be invoked as a constraint on ordinary palliative care, it is not clear that it can be coherently extended to justify such practices as terminal sedation. A better approach would reconsider double effect’s traditional prohibition on hastening death as a means to relieve suffering in the context of acute palliative care
Before you claim that this supports your view you need to note that the quote in Red is the current legal position and that it Green is the author’s alternative interpretation.
You don’t want a doctor for that, you want a veterinarian.
No, we have the actual SCOTUS ruling and somebody else’s interpretation of it, which you are quoting third-hand.
Go back and read Vacco for yourself.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/95-1858.ZO.html
Rehnquist lead opinion in Vacco
Furthermore, a physician who withdraws, or honors a patient’s refusal to begin, life sustaining medical treatment purposefully intends, or may so intend, only to respect his patient’s wishes and “to cease doing useless and futile or degrading things to the patient when [the patient] no longer stands to benefit from them.” Assisted Suicide in the United States, Hearing before the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 104th Cong., 2d Sess., 368 (1996) (testimony of Dr. Leon R. Kass). The same is true when a doctor provides aggressive palliative care; in some cases, painkilling drugs may hasten a patient’s death, but the physician’s purpose and intent is, or maybe, only to ease his patient’s pain. A doctor who assists a suicide, however, “must, necessarily and indubitably, intend primarily that the patient be made dead.” Id., at 367. Similarly, a patient who commits suicide with a doctor’s aid necessarily has the specific intent to end his or her own life, while a patient who refuses or discontinues treatment might not. See, e.g., Matter of Conroy, supra, at 351, 486 A. 2d, at 1224 (patients who refuse life sustaining treatment “may not harbor a specific intent to die” and may instead “fervently wish to live, but to do so free of unwanted medical technology, surgery, or drugs”); Superintendent of Belchertown State School v. Saikewicz, 373 Mass. 728, 743, n. 11, 370 N. E. 2d 417, 426, n. 11 (1977) (“*n refusing treatment the patient may not have the specific intent to die”).
So now it is your view vs Rehnquist.
If death as a result of palliative care is illegal in the US, it should be easy to provide court cases of palliative care medics being convicted of homicide.
Who said it was illegal? I am trying to explain how US law works to you. The Supreme Court was being asked to decide whether New York could permissibly ban physician-assisted suicide. It was not being asked to decide whether it was legal to provide care that might ultimately result in death. US courts can only consider issues actually raised by the parties. New York had not banned “double effect” procedures so the court was not deciding whether or not they are legal. It had no jurisdiction to do so. The quoted language is dicta and only indicates that Rehnquist might vote that way if an actual case arose in the future.
As I’ve already pointed out, the court only raises the double effect principle to distinguish if from euthanasia.
Surely, in a common law system, that which is not illegal is legal.
SCOTUS used the current legality of physician assisted suicide as a starting point for deciding what the limits were over deliberate killing.
If SCOTUS has used such a common law tenet to support its deliberations, in my book that means they are giving credence to that being an established part of the law.
If they thought it was not part of t law they could support, they would have produced other cites to consider.
Physician assisted suicide is legal in the USA and has been supported by SCOTUS.
It is not illegal under the New York law which was at issue in Vasco. SCOTUS was not deciding whether it was illegal under the New York law at issue in Vasco. They were deciding whether that law was constitutional. In the US, federal courts do not interpret state laws (except when sitting in diversity cases, which Vasco was not.) They determine if those laws are in conflict with the federal constitution. They do not serve the same functions as courts of general jurisdiction in (say) Scotland, which not only determine if laws are within the authority of Parliament but also are charged with interpreting them.
No. They determined whether physician assisted suicide could be made illegal in conformity with the federal constitution. Double effect was mentioned as an aside, as an example of activities not covered by the NY law.
This is my last comment on the particular matter.
If Rehnquist used case and common law on double effect as a precedent, then I am happy to claim as I did originally that SCOTUS supports double effect. They would hardly quote as precedent that which they did not support.
I did not claim that there was a specific ruling on double effect, merely that SCOTUS supported it.