ipl-logo

Summary Of The Supreme Court Case Gonzales Vs. Oregon

774 Words4 Pages

The Supreme Court Case Gonzales vs. Oregon, argued on October 5, 2005, deals with an act that Oregon enacted, the “Death With Dignity Act.” Under this act, physicians had the power to prescribe fatal doses of controlled substances to patients who were terminally ill —meaning that suicide assisted by a doctor was now legal in Oregon. Attorney General John Ashcroft, in 2001, asked that law enforcement prosecute doctors who prescribed these lethal doses of controlled substances by issuing a ruling called the “Ashcroft Directive.” The Ashcroft Directive stated that under the Controlled Substances Act, suicide under a physician was not an actual “medical purpose,” and therefore, illegal. The General Attorney proceeding Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, …show more content…

One of the main points that Gonzales used to support him is an Amendment to the Controlled Substances Act that gives the Attorney general of the United States the power to prohibit certain controlled substances from being used if they were not helpful or not in the best interests of the people. The two clauses that were vital to the case were the Controlled Substances Act as well as the Death With Dignity Act. One of the argument that Oregon made was the fact that states usually regulated and looked after their own medical practices. One of the main issues that was seen within the case was morality. There was an amicus curiae of the Catholic Medical Association, one of the multiple instances in which an issue of morality was involved. The state of Oregon addressed these issues of morality by assuring that there were in place many safeguards in the act, and that there were limits to who could actually get the treatment (for example, only patients who are at least six months within dying are able to get …show more content…

The justices who ruled in favor of Oregon were Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O’Connor, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Anthony Kennedy, who delivered the verdict. The three justices who dissented were Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Chief Justice John G. Roberts. The final statement showed that Congress’s intentions when they created the Controlled Substances Act was not to limit or standardize medical practices, but rather to prevent doctors from engaging in drug dealing. They stated that it was not within the power of the Attorney General to outlaw certain medical

Show More
Related

Gonzales Vs Raich Case Study

414 Words | 2 Pages

The Case Against Marijuana Gonzales v. Raich In Gonzales v. Raich the legal issue facing the court is whether Congress has the power, through Article I Section 8 of the Constitution, to “prohibit the local cultivation and use of marijuana in compliance with California law.” The 1996 Proposition 215, now codified as the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, was created to ensure ill residents of California had access to medicinal marijuana. The 1996 Act is relevant to this 2005 case because it is important to the eventual dispute before the court.

Read More

Supreme Court Case Of Nancy Cruzan V. Arizona

2245 Words | 9 Pages

Twenty five year old, Nancy Cruzan lived in the state of Missouri. Unfortunately, One night Nancy was involved in a very serious automobile accident on January 11, 1983 where she was coming home from working a long evening shift. Nancy Cruzan drove a very old vehicle, so it lacked seatbelts. Cruzan lost control of her vehicle, hit a pole and her car overturned and flipped numerous times. Nancy was ejected from her car driver seat and was found face first in a ditch.

Read More

Alberto Gonzales V. Angel Mcclary Raich Case Study

98 Words | 1 Pages

Alberto Gonzales v. Angel McClary Raich, 545 U.S Facts: California passed the “Compassionate Use Act of 1996” which allowed for ill residents to use medical marijuana for medical purposes. The respondents, Angel Raich and Diane Morson suffered from several illness that only medical marijuana could treat. They were growing marijuana in their home, and had their plants destroyed by DEA agents. The Defendant sued the Attorney General, arguing that Congress had exceeded their interstate commerce clause authority in legislating the behavior of a local citizen, consuming a locally grown herb in his own home, after the act was passed.

Read More

Supreme Court Case: Muller V. Oregon

592 Words | 3 Pages

The link above is a primary source over “The "Brandeis Brief" from Muller v. Oregon (1908).” Muller vs Oregon was one of the most important U.S. Supreme Court cases of the Progressive Era. Going into this case, Muller issue was, “is a state law setting a maximum workday for women constitutional?” Muller vs The State of Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908) was argued on January 5, 1908 and ending on February 24, 1908. Curt Muller was a laundry mat owner in Portland, Oregon who was charged with violating an Oregon law that strictly set a restricted maximum of ten hours a day for a women employee to work.

Read More

Muller V. Oregon Essay

800 Words | 4 Pages

Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908), is listed is a landmark decision made in the United States Supreme Court history. This law justifies both sex discrimination and labor laws that were made during that time period. Without theses laws we probably wouldnt have gotten to the point we are at today with labor laws. This ruling set the foundation for the laws we have today on how many hours we can work a day as well as how many hours we can work without break. The case upheld an Oregon law that bared women from working more than 10 hours a day in industrialized jobs.

Read More

Attorney General Ashcroft Case Study

495 Words | 2 Pages

Attorney General Ashcroft does not have the legal right to threaten physicians with revoking their license since, only seven years before Oregon passed the Act which allowed to assist their patients in death. Some may believe that the Attorney General took his personal and moral opinion to work, where he could change law to his preference. The District court agreed with the statement above, therefore, they concluded that Attorney General Ashcroft did not have the authority to override a state 's decision regarding what is or is not a "legitimate medical practice" and that Ashcroft exceeded his authority under the CSA. In July 2005, Oregon v. Ashcroft changes to Gonzales v. Oregon.

Read More

Summary Of How The Supreme Court Immigration Decision Hurt Us Gonzales

572 Words | 3 Pages

In the article, How the Supreme Court Immigration Decision Hurts All of Us by Roberto G. Gonzales, an assistant professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education (2016), the genre is an article, argues that America should get an immigration reform to bring immigrants and families out to the public and to show connections and economic contributions to make America stronger. Our country (America) is made of many cultures the only country that’s made that way. Our country everyone has rights and freedom, we are all equal but some more equal than others because that’s just how society is. Gonzales supports his argument by giving examples of beneficiaries that had a positive impact in their lives, able to get good paying jobs, credit cards, driver

Read More

Obergefell V. Hodges (2005)

2137 Words | 9 Pages

Question 1 Since the Supreme Court was established in 1789 it has directly or indirectly been a policymaker. The job of the Supreme Court is to interpret the Constitution, but inevitably by doing so, they have become policy makers that change the way citizens and the government interact; from Miranda rights to same-sex marriage the Supreme Court has played a major part in policy making. Recent cases that show the Supreme Court changes the way that the government and its citizens interact with each other are Gonzales v. Raich (2005), Salinas v. Texas (2013), and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015). First, in Gonzales v. Raich (2005) the Supreme Court criminalized the production and use of cannabis even where states approved it for medicinal purposes.

Read More

When Was The Oregon State Board Of Eugenics Be Abolished

1273 Words | 6 Pages

Based on the evidence, it was the correct decision to terminate the Oregon State Board of Eugenics. Arguments in Favor of the Oregon

Read More

Doctors The Death Chamber By Atul Gawande Summary

618 Words | 3 Pages

Atul Gawande, surgeon, professor of surgery at Harvard and public health researcher, explores his view on the death penalty and the research that shook his views. Gawande’s personal view on the death penalty has been transformed by the research conducted for his story “Doctors of the Death Chamber”. In this story doctors and nurses give personal accounts of their controversial roles in prison executions. Gawande’s story about capital punishment raises the question: “Is medicine being used as an instrument of death?” Prior to 1982 the United States carried out executions through hanging, gas chambers, firing squads, and electrocution.

Read More

Argumentative Essay: Oregon's Death With Dignity Law

1554 Words | 7 Pages

“In the 20 years that Oregon’s Death with Dignity Law has been on the books, 1,749 patients have been prescribed lethal medications, and only 64% of them (1,127) used them to die, according to state data. Last year, Oregon doctors prescribed 206 lethal medications, 133 of which were reported used by patients” (Portland Press Herald). This statistic shows that not all patients who are prescribed the drugs, use them to end their life. Gale states, “The three most frequently cites reasons for requesting suicide were: a decreasing ability to participate in activities that made life enjoyable, loss of autonomy and loss of dignity.

Read More

Pros And Cons Of Federalizing Marijuana

912 Words | 4 Pages

Federalism and Marijuana The scuffle over the marijuana regulation is one of the most important federalism dispute in a generation. This open-ended conflict of federal and state marijuana laws forces people to think over the protective powers of the federal drug laws and the fiiting roles of state and federal government in setting drug policy. A weaken instability and confusion have been caused due to the conflict of these states changing from prohibition to the regulation of marijuana use. Although the courts have not authorized an actual configuration of the preemption doctrine of this situation and it is argued that the precautionary extension of the Federal Controlled Substance Act is comparably reserved.

Read More

Death With Dignity Act Analysis

878 Words | 4 Pages

The Act allows terminally ill patients to seek life ending drugs following specific rules and regulations from a licensed Oregon physician. Since then four other states have legalized physician assisted death. Washington also has Death with Dignity laws that became legal in 2008. The most recent states to pass laws regarding physician assisted death are Vermont who legalized Death with Dignity laws in 2013 and California legalized it in 2015. Montana doesn’t have a law in place for physician assisted death but in 2009, “Montana’s Supreme Court ruled nothing in the state law prohibited a physician from honoring a terminally ill, mentally competent patient’s request by prescribing medication to hasten the patient’s death”

Read More

The Death With Dignity Act (DWDA)

1311 Words | 6 Pages

The Death with Dignity Act (DWDA), which allows terminally-ill patients to request physician-assisted suicide, was first introduced in Oregon in 1997. The basic premise of the law is that terminally ill patients, with no outside help, should be able to choose the right to end their life. Since then a few more states have the DWDA or an similar law in their state; an ongoing debate is going on to make the act legal across the nation. The Death with Dignity act allows the individual’s request to die to be acknowledged by the state. Though various of groups and people have spoken against this act, Oregon, with close to two decades of experience with the law, has shown that it can work well even when faced with backlash from the public because

Read More

Argumentative Essay: The Death With Dignity Act

1838 Words | 8 Pages

In a close victory, fifty-one percent of the voters voted yes and forty-nine percent opposed the Death with Dignity Act. However, the law was delayed for several years due to an injunction by District Judge Hogan who had ruled that the Oregon Death with Dignity Act violated the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection clause (Legal). The ruling was immediately appealed to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and in 1996 the ban was ruled unconstitutional by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In two related cases at that time, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that assisted suicide was not a Constitutional right, but also that the issue would be best addressed in the “laboratory of the states” which are free to prohibit or legalize physician assisted dying. In 1997, the Oregon Legislative Assembly put Measure 51 on the ballot in an effort to repeal the Death with Dignity Act.

Read More

More about Summary Of The Supreme Court Case Gonzales Vs. Oregon

Related Topics

Open Document