A terminally ill former lecturer has won the right to fight the assisted dying ban. The UK Court of Appeal in its judgement reversed a previous high court ruling and said the Court should hear the appellant’s claim.
The appellant, Noel Conway, had challenged the assisted dying ban having been diagnosed with motor neurone disease in November 2014. Voluntary euthanasia is considered murder under English and Welsh law while assisted dying is prohibited by section 2(1) of the Suicide Act 1961. Mr Conway was given less than a year to live after being diagnosed with the incurable condition. In his appeal Mr Conway expressed a wish to end his life at home surrounded by those closest to him.
In the High Court’s original ruling Lord Justice Burnett had stated that “it remains institutionally inappropriate for a court to make a declaration of incompatibility, whatever our personal views of how the underlying policy issues should be resolved”. However in reversing that decision Lord Justice McFarlane and Lord Justice Beatson of the Court of Appeal said: “It is arguable that the evidence demonstrates that a mechanism of assisted dying can be devised for those in Mr Conway’s narrowly defined group that is practical so as to address one of the unanswered questions in the earlier Nicklinson right to die case”. The Nicklinson decision which was reported in an earlier issue of the PILA Bulletin decided that the law relating to assisting suicide cannot be changed by judicial decision but rather by Parliament. Since the Nicklinson ruling the UK Parliament made a decision not to change the law in this regard, a decision that was considered by the Court of Appeal in its judgement. In the latest decision the Court ruled that: “We consider that, in the context of considering permission for judicial review, the fact that since [the Nicklinson case] parliament has made a decision not to change the law and the matter is no longer under active consideration means that Mr Conway should be entitled to argue that it is no longer institutionally inappropriate for the court to consider whether to make a declaration of incomparability [between the existing law and Conway’s rights under the European convention on human rights].”
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For a copy of the judgement click here.