Law Matters: A Brief Ideological History of Assisted Death

The Law Matters Seminar Series gives you the opportunity to engage with the critical issues of the day in the field of law.

Our Law School Community encourages critical, innovative and forward-thinking and this series of lectures provides a space for students to broaden their views and discuss the issues that really matter. 

A Brief Ideological History of Assisted Death

When we think about assisted death, we typically understand it in the context of law and ethics i.e., that assisted death is an ethical issue to be solved as such; or a legal problem to be solved as such. In an attempt to win the argument, we often see legal and bioethical scholars either marginalize the historical and ideological contexts of assisted death or use history as a way to marginalize the ideological contexts in order to imbibe the desire to die with a unique dispensation of legitimacy or rationality.

This creates a false necessity around the desire to be helped to die (by the state). As long as we continue to ignore or marginalize the (actual) historical and ideological contexts of assisted death then the problem will remain irredeemable. Consequently, more effort needs to be made to re-historicize the problem of assisted death in order to shine a light on its murky past in order to liberate terminal people in the future.