Desarrollos recientes en la jurisprudencia sobre el derecho a morir / Recent case law about the right to die

This paper reviews the sentences dictated between 1993 and 2002 by the Supreme Courts of Canada and the Unites States, the House of Lords and Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and the European Human Rights Court, about the validity of the legal prohibition of assistance for suicide. These sentences constituted a judicial consensus about the right to die. This consensus recognized the legal right of patients to reject medical treatments but did not recognize the right to be assisted by a physician to commit suicide. This exclusion is changing in the recent case law of Canada and the United Kingdom, which accepts the fundamental right of terminal patients to medically assisted suicide.