Ten years ago this week, the Supreme Court declined to rule that the Suicide Act’s prohibition on assisted suicide was a breach of Convention rights. The judgment, R (Nicklinson) v Ministry of Justice, has been much discussed since then. It has also been much misunderstood, partly because some of the judges in the majority indicated that they might in a future case conclude that the ban on assisted suicide was unjustified. The two judges in dissent, Lady Hale and Lord Kerr, would have ruled then and there that the 1961 Act was incompatible with the Convention’s right to private life.
Lady Hale has now returned to the fray, coming out in support of the My Death, My Decision campaign against the ban on assisted suicide. Speaking this week at an event to mark the tenth anniversary of the Nicklinson judgment, Lady Hale has dubbed the legislation “cruel and inhumane” for forcing persons to “go on living against their will”. She adds “Of course, there must be proper safeguards to make sure that their decisions are freely made”, but, as in her dissenting judgment, fails to establish that adequate safeguards could be devised. Indeed, writing-extrajudicially Lady Hale explicitly stated that her conclusion was reached “by reference to principle rather than evidence.”
