The "Living Constitution" and the Right to Die

WHOSE LIFE IS IT, ANYWAY?

In the 1918 draft case of Arver v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the constitutionality of conscription, arguing that "every citizen or subject is obliged to serve the State," and thus that "the sovereign has the right...to conscript whom he pleases."

In other words, the Supreme Court repudiated Americans' right to their own lives.

Seventy-nine years later, in Washington v. Glucksberg, the Court also ruled that no provision of the Constitution protects the individual's right to choose to die.

Philosopher Ayn Rand held that "There is only one fundamental right...a man's right to his own life." Erika and Henry Mark Holzer wrote, "It is the right to life that conscription denies."

Now, in this controversial new book, legal scholar Henry Mark Holzer dissects the Supreme Court's Glucksberg decision, showing how its tacit premises of altruism, collectivism, and statism have deprived us not only of our right to end our lives, but of our right to life itself.