Today's Oregonian has a recap of sorts of yesterday's court hearing on Oregon's "death with dignity" law:

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has no right to undermine Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law because Congress allows states to determine what is a legitimate medical practice, Oregon attorneys told a federal appeals court panel Wednesday in Portland.

"The states get to make that decision," Robert Rocklin, an Oregon Department of Justice attorney, told a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

But a federal attorney said that when physicians prescribe a lethal dose of federally controlled drugs, Ashcroft has the authority to enforce the federal Controlled Substances Act to punish those doctors.

"The application of federal statutes is uniform," said Gregory Katsas, an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice.

Interestingly, the article makes more of some of the questions from the bench about procedural and jurisdictional questions ("Did Oregon challenge Ashcroft in the proper court. Did physician-assisted suicide supporters file their lawsuit too early.") than I think is merited by the hearing. As an attorney for supporters of the Oregon law stated outside the courthouse after the hearing, the same sorts of questions were asked by U.S. District Judge Robert Jones when the case was before him, and (near as I can tell) are the sorts of questions that are asked by the court almost as a matter of routine.

Also mentioned is an exchange that I actually found interesting but neglected to bring up in yesterday's item:

[Judge Richard] Tallman also asked why the court should give any deference to Ashcroft's interpretation of the federal law after the Justice Department didn't allow Oregon officials to comment on any proposed rule change that would affect assisted suicide.

"Why didn't the attorney general invite participation by the state of Oregon," Tallman asked.

Katsas said: "Because he's not required to," adding that the court's deference to federal officials should not be based on "a matter of good form."

At issue here was a rule-making process into which the state of Oregon (they say) had been reassured they would be invited, but in fact were not. This line of questioning, about how that process should or should not play into any consideration of "deference" also seemed related to the matter of "finality" -- in the sense that, if the rule-making process did not take all issues and all parties into account, just how "final" can the results of that process be considered to be?

This entry was posted by The One True b!X on May 8th, 2003, at 12:51 PM and is filed under Law Enforcement & Legal Issues, State of Oregon. There are and .