Sinuciderea asistată: opinia filosofilor
Assisted Suicide: The Philosophers' Brief

Summary/Abstract: The Supreme Court decided two cases posing the question whether dying patients have a right to choose death rather than continued pain and suffering. We print here the brief filed as amicus curiae in these cases by the group of six moral philosophers listed above, with an introduction by Ronald Dworkin.The philosophers’ brief answers these questions in two steps. First, it defines a very general moral and constitutional principle—that every competent person has the right to make momentous personal decisions which invoke fundamental religious or philosophical convictions about life’s value for himself. Second, it recognizes that people may make such momentous decisions impulsively or out of emotional depression, when their act does not reflect their enduring convictions; and it therefore allows that in some circumstances a state has the constitutional power to override that right in order to protect citizens from mistaken but irrevocable acts of self-destruction. States may be allowed to prevent assisted suicide by people who—it is plausible to think—would later be grateful if they were prevented from dying.Each individual has a right to make the “most intimate and personal choices central to personal dignity and autonomy.” That right encompasses the right to exercise some control over the time and manner of one’s death.The patient-plaintiffs in these cases were all mentally competent individuals in the final phase of terminal illness and died within months of filing their claims.

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