Physician-Assisted Suicide and Beyond: What Would Rawls Do?
Marty Carcieri
January 5, 2014
Physician-Assisted Suicide, even for the terminally ill, is legal in only four U.S. States. Yet there are now proposals in the U.S. and abroad to extend the right to die (i.e., to obtain and consume a reliable lethal dose of barbiturates) even further: 1) to those over 70 years of age, and 2) to those whose longtime spouses are near death and who wish to die with them. How would these proposals fare under the principles of justice articulated and defended by John Rawls, the most influential political theorist of our time? Friend of SVH Martin Carcieri will present his application of Rawlsian principles to one of the most urgent public policy issues of our time.
Martin Carcieri is an Associate Professor of Political Science at San Francisco State University, where he teaches courses and seminars on Constitutional Law and Political Theory. He holds a J.D. and Ph.D. from the University of California, and has published twenty-five journal articles and book chapters.
To learn more before the presentation on Sunday, you can read the handout.