Last month in Oregon v. Ashcroft, a federal district court rebuffed U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft’s attempt to use the federal Controlled Substances Act to override Oregon’s decision to legalize physician-assisted suicide. The court announced that nothing in the text or history of that law indicates that Congress intended to give the attorney general the authority to set national policy on assisted suicide.
Many in the academy (including me) have been deeply concerned about Ashcroft’s conservative political maneuverings. It is thus not surprising that the District Court’s opinion — viewed as a straightforward matter of statutory interpretation and a slap on an overreaching attorney general’s wrist — drew a good deal of applause.
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