Subjects of jurisdiction: The dying, Northern Territory, Australia, 1995–1997

Northern Territory Supreme Court in Wake and Gondarra v NT and Asche (1996) 109 NTR 1 before it was rendered ineffective by the Euthanasia Laws Act 1997 (Cth). While it is unlikely that this legislation will ever become a model for future legislation, the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act 1995 (NT) stands as the first assisted suicide legislation enacted in a common law jurisdiction.4 However, the Act remains instructive in the way that it draws on a civil jurisprudential tradition to establish the legal personality of the terminally ill person as well as in the way its jurisdictional devices establish the horizons of the concerns of civility and civil government.