THE ASSISTED-SUICIDE DECISION

The Supreme Court smacked former Attorney General John Ashcroft and
the Bush administration when it ruled 6 to 3 that the Justice
Department had gone beyond its authority in trying to undermine an
assisted-suicide law in Oregon. The only disquieting note was that
the new chief justice, John Roberts Jr., who had assured senators
that he believed people had "the right to be let alone," nevertheless
joined the dissenters in arguing that the federal government had the
power to block Oregon's pioneering effort to let terminally ill
patients end their own lives humanely.

The decision was notable because it rejected Mr. Ashcroft's attempt
to impose his religiously conservative ideology on a state whose
voters had decided differently. Oregon's law allowing
physician-assisted suicide was approved narrowly in 1994 and
reaffirmed by a thumping 60 to 40 percent vote three years later.

Congressional conservatives, including Mr. Ashcroft when he was a
senator, failed to push through a federal law to overturn it.

So when Mr. Ashcroft became attorney general in 2001, he simply
declared that the federal Controlled Substances Act gave him the
authority to prevent doctors from prescribing lethal drugs for the
purpose of suicide.

That position had been rejected by the Clinton administration, and
Mr. Ashcroft issued his own directive without consulting Oregon or
apparently anyone else outside his own department. His successor,
Alberto Gonzales, embraced this power grab.

The Supreme Court concluded that Mr. Ashcroft had overreached when he
ruled that physician-assisted suicide was not a "legitimate medical
purpose" that would allow doctors to prescribe lethal drugs under the
Controlled Substances Act. That act was intended to thwart drug abuse
and trafficking, not to punish doctors who prescribed medicines in
accord with state law. The majority found that Congress had not
intended to pre-empt the state regulation of medical practice or to
give a single executive branch officer the power to define standards
of medical practice.

Congressional conservatives are already vowing to push through a law
barring assisted suicide.

After the sorry display of pandering during the Terri Schiavo
tragedy, no one can bet that they won't succeed this time. But our
own sense is that Oregon has acted with exquisite care by requiring
that two doctors agree that a patient is likely to die within six
months, and is well informed and acting voluntarily, before lethal
drugs can be prescribed. Congress would be wise not to meddle in a
sensitive issue that Oregon has clearly studied far more closely.