ABSTRACT
The state legislatures make right-to-die policy primarily by passing two kinds of legislation: durable power of attorney for health-care provisions and living-will laws. This chapter presents a survey of the right-to-die legislation that has passed to date, and explains how this curious body of statutory law came into existence. Like the courts, the legislatures seem predisposed to use each other's laws, while looking to respected third parties like the Uniform Commissioners as guides for their own policy mediation purposes. The commonalities can be lumped into six categories: the rationale for existence of the law, the kinds of conditions covered, the procedures for executing advance directives, the release of liability for health-care professionals, health-care and life insurance restrictions, and the nature of the rights explicitly conveyed. Durable power of attorney for health-care provisions usually do little more than shunt the decision-making dilemma from a principal to a surrogate, an individual who is sometimes referred to as a "health-care proxy".
