ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the attitudes of judges regarding their own roles as decision-makers in cases involving the assertion of a right to die. In professional contexts, judges confront the same issues of life and death as do patients, family members, and physicians; the difference is that judges may use the awesome power of the government to enforce their decisions. Many of the judicial decisions raising issues of the choice between life and death have involved the refusal, often--but not necessarily--on religious grounds, to consent to medical treatment. One case to which judges, who find themselves involved with "right to die" issues, have often looked for guidance involved a 25-year-old mother, a Jehovah's Witness. Brought into Georgetown Hospital in 1963 with a ruptured ulcer and having lost two-thirds of her body's blood supply, the woman and her husband both refused to permit a blood transfusion. Such medical treatment, they indicated, would violate their religious beliefs as Jehovah's Witnesses.
