Robert R. Beezer

Robert R. Beezer is a circuit judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. The following viewpoint is taken from Beezer’s dissenting opinion in Compassion in Dying v. State of Washington, in which the right-to-die group Compassion in Dying challenged Washington’s laws against assisted suicide on behalf of three terminally ill patients and their physician. Beezer argues that laws prohibiting assisted suicide are not unconstitutional because there is no fundamental right to assisted suicide. Patients on life-support systems who seek to hasten their death by refusing treatment are not in the same legal class as terminally ill patients who seek physician-assisted suicide, Beezer contends. Furthermore, he maintains that the state’s interests in preserving life outweigh any individual liberty to commit suicide...