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New Mexico Supreme Court upholds state ban on physician assisted suicide

Here is a link to the June 30, 2016 decision by the New Mexico Supreme Court upholding the state’s ban on assisted suicide. A trial court judge in New Mexico  had found the law unconstitutional. By a divided vote, the court of appeals reversed and the New Mexico Supreme Court has now also rejected the trial judge’s decision.

This is welcome news!!! The Supreme Court’s decision, which interprets the New Mexico Constitution,  follows the same sort of approach the US Supreme Court exhibited in Glucksberg when the Court rejected the argument that there was a fundamental right to assisted suicide. The New Mexico court reflects a posture of judicial restraint that doesn’t always characterize judicial decision-making on contested social issues.

http://www.nmcompcomm.us/nmcases/nmsc/slips/SC35,478.pdf

 

 

Richard Myers

Richard S. Myers, the Vice-President of UFL, is Professor of Law at Ave Maria School of Law, where he teaches Antitrust, Civil Procedure, Conflict of Laws, Constitutional Law, and Religious Freedom. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Kenyon College and earned his law degree at Notre Dame, where he won the law school's highest academic prize. He began his legal career by clerking for Judge John F. Kilkenny of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Professor Myers also worked for Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue in Washington, D.C. He taught at Case Western Reserve University School of Law and the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law before joining the Ave Maria faculty. He is a co-editor of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Natural Law Tradition: Contemporary Perspectives (Catholic University of American Press, 2004) and a co-editor of Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy (Scarecrow Press, 2007). He has also published extensively on constitutional law in law reviews and also testified before Congressional and state legislative hearings on life issues. Married to Mollie Murphy, who is also on the faculty at Ave Maria School of Law, they are the proud parents of six children - Michael, Patrick, Clare, Kathleen, Matthew, and Andrew. http://www.avemarialaw.edu/index.cfm?event=faculty.bio&pid=11705E7D4E0111010366