Last Friday I wrote here about reports of a Kentucky Supreme Court decision ruling that held, according to a Louisville Courier-Jounral story, that "a relative or guardian may decide to end life support for someone who is permanently unconscious — even if that person hasn't expressed his wishes through a living will or other means." I've now obtained the decsion and uploaded it. It is Woods v. Kentucky. The entire document is 69 pages (and for some reason is more than 5 MB - sorry); a concurring opinion appears on p. 42 of the document; a dissent begins on p. 43 and continues to p. 69.
I was reminded of last week's Kentucky decision when I read this article that will appear in Tuesday's Christian Science Monitor (recommended by How Appealing), about the ongoing Terri Schiavo case in Florida. The lead:
MIAMI – A six-year legal dispute over whether to terminate the life support of a severely brain-damaged Florida woman has placed the state's highest court at the center of a bitter clash between the right to live - and the right [to] die.[Update 8/31/04] NPR had good story on the Schiavo legal issues this morning. I'll post the link here when it becomes available, generally at midmorning. [10:30 a.m. EST Here is the link.]Ultimately at issue in the case of Terri Schiavo is whether the nutrition tube that sustains her life should remain connected. But what will occupy a lion's share of the argument Tuesday as her case is considered by the Florida Supreme Court is whether state lawmakers and Gov. Jeb Bush overstepped their constitutional authority last fall when they intervened to reattach Mrs. Schiavo's nutrition tube after a state judge had ordered it disconnected.
See also this lengthy feature today at Law.com. Some quotes:
If allowed to stand, Terri's Law would set a perilous precedent allowing the governor and Legislature to overturn any court ruling they don't like, leading constitutional experts say. "To anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of the Florida or U.S. Constitution, the challenge wouldn't be finding which constitutional law that it violates but knowing where to stop, because it violates so many," said Laurence Tribe, a Harvard University law professor.Posted by Marcia Oddi at August 30, 2004 07:07 PM"If a judicial ruling can be overturned by the Legislature, then the courts are rendering nothing more than advisory opinions," said Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor at Duke University.
Health care and elder law attorneys worry that if the law is upheld, it will undo decades of federal and state statutes and court rulings establishing a patient's right to make personal medical decisions. These laws have set clear guidelines instructing courts how to resolve disputes in these life-and-death cases.
"This is an intrusion into what's been a well-thought-out legislative scheme that took many years to develop, not only in Florida, but throughout the country," said Valerie Larcombe, a health care lawyer and shareholder at Akerman Senterfitt in West Palm Beach, Fla.