Word: laws
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...media may be dying, and career paths into journalism may be rapidly evaporating, but one Harvard Law School student may have found a shortcut from Langdell to the top of the Washington Post opinion page...
...Vincent Minelli, director of the Zurich-based assisted-suicide group Dignitas, says that "if a new law is passed, the only thing it would accomplish is an increase in clandestine deaths and in the number of suicides in general." Unlike EXIT, whose membership is restricted to Swiss residents, at an annual fee of $27, Dignitas has sparked repeated controversy by helping people from abroad die in its clinic, including non-terminal cases like that of Dan James, a 23-year-old British rugby player who was paralyzed from the neck down and who ended his life in Zurich last year...
...Critics also say that, contrary to the law stipulating that assisted suicide should not be a profit-driven business, Dignitas is actively luring foreigners for financial gain. Minelli denies that any of the 1,027 patients he helped die since the group's founding in 1998 were recruited for profit, and while he charges about $7,000 per assisted suicide, he says the money covers only administrative costs and that poorer patients are charged a lower fee or nothing...
...There is no need for stricter regulations; they are already stringent enough," says Frank Petermann, an attorney specializing in medical law. "From a legal standpoint, it's difficult to understand how the Ministry of Justice can work out a draft bill that violates the Swiss constitution." That is one of the arguments that EXIT, Dignitas and other supporters of assisted suicide are vowing to use in their fight to maintain the existing law. "We will do all we can to combat this attempt at taking away our freedom," EXIT president Sobel vows. "If need be, we'll force a nationwide...
...citizens to challenge a legislative decision through a referendum if 50,000 signatures are collected within three months. Given that an April opinion poll by M.I.S. Trend, a market-research institute, found that 75% of Swiss voters are in favor of the existing liberal legislation, the assisted-suicide law may be a hard one to kill...