The Right to Assisted Suicide: A Jurisprudential Analysis on the Rulings of The European Court of Human Rights
Keywords:
Jurisprudence, Right to Assisted Suicide, Right to Life, Right to Private Life, European Court of Human RightsAbstract
The European Convention on Human Rights acknowledges, The Right to Life by articulating in Article 2 of the Convention that the lives of individuals be protected by law, member states have the duty to ensure that no person be deprived of their life by unlawful means.
Inquisitively, a number of individuals have asserted claims against the state before the European Court of Human Rights regarding the ‘Right to Assisted Suicide’ on grounds of the Right to respect for private life under Article 8 of the same convention, which restricts state interference in regard to the individual’s liberty and personal autonomy.
Interestingly, the rulings of the ECtHR had progressively shifted from declaring them inadmissible with regards to the state’s duty under Article 2, to recognizing that claims of such a right could fall in the scope of Article 8. This paradigm shift in the Court’s reasoning has raised concerns, primarily about the conflicting interests between the state’s duty to protect life and the individual’s personal autonomy, and subsequently on the role of the judiciary in the establishment of new legal norms through the adjudication process; the acclaimed ‘Right to Assisted Suicide’.
This paper intends to provide an analysis on how the ECtHR’s altered stance on its rulings could be understood through a jurisprudential point of view, involving two contrasting concepts in jurisprudence: H.L.A Hart’s Rule of Recognition, and Ronald Dworkin’s Rights Thesis., despite their difference in methodologies, an Despite their contrasting nature, both theories can provide an explanation of how the judicial decision-making process functions in a legal penumbra, which , be used to justify thereby grounding jurisprudential action for legal decisions in difficult cases such as the same rulings of ECtHR’s. This phenomenon of contradicting theories leading to the same outcome must be highlighted on the asserted ‘Right to Assisted Suicide’ Therefore, the probability of deviating outcomes resulting from the implementation of legal theories must be highly considered and understood, especially in the field of jurisprudence where outcomes of judicial decisions have direct impact on individual rights.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Chanya Chatpornjarat, Chakrit Tatong, Papasarin Thanatpiyasart, Pimmada Kaewkasi, Ratchanon Suwannasaen, Samita Noopluem
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