Will the UK Supreme Court allow assisted dying?
MPs overwhelmingly voted against passing the Assisted Dying Bill into law in September 2015. The Bill was defeated by a majority of 212, despite the heartfelt pleas of many MPs to pass it into law. The size of the defeat means that it is unlikely that Parliament will consider a similar law for many years. Yet many considered the Bill their last opportunity to make assisted dying lawful. There is, however, one further possible way assisted dying could become lawful in the UK--and that would be where the Supreme Court allowed it. In this article, the author reviews the Supreme Court's decision in R (on the application of Nicklinson v Ministry of Justice [2014] and considers how likely it is that the Supreme Court will now sanction assisted dying following Parliament's refusal to enact an assisted dying law.
Senior Lecturer in Health Law, College of Human and Health Sciences, Swansea University.
Richard
R
Griffith
D006801:Humans; D017236:Suicide, Assisted / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D006113:United Kingdom
Assisted dying; Human rights; Margin of appreciation; Supreme Court