As you know, these cases raise the fundamental constitutional issues of how to define both individual liberty and equality. Moreover, they do so in the tragic and emotional context of impending death. What control may the state legitimately exercise over our last days of life? Once we are already on the brink of death, may the state prevent us from terminating our own lives prematurely? May it prevent us from getting the help of a physician in that process?

These are questions we all may face -- whether for ourselves or for our parents and friends. The grim truths of a hospital room are not easily translated into the sometimes arcane language of legal doctrine. But that is the currency in which the Court deals, and so I shall try.

The two cases have come to the Supreme Court under importantly different circumstances, however. The Federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (which decided the Washington case) ruled that Washington's law prohibiting physician-assisted suicide violated the "due process" clause of the Constitution's Fo urteenth Amendment, which forbids states from depriving individuals of their "liberty" without the due process of the law.

By contrast, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (which decided the New York case) ruled that New York's prohibition on physician-assisted suicide violated the "equal protection" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits states from treating "similarly situated" individuals differently without sufficient justification.

In the Ninth Circuit case, Washington v. Glucksberg (1996), the Court of Appeals relied on the same controversial doctrine of constitutional law that supports a constitutional right to abortion -- "substan tive due process." In practice, this doctrine holds that whenever the government intrudes upon a fundamental "liberty interest," it must have a "compelling" justification. Otherwise the law cannot stand.

In applying substantive due process, a court must ask itself two questions: Does the challenged law impinge on a fundamental liberty interest? If so, is the state's reason for impinging on that liberty interest sufficiently "compelling" to justify the law?

In the physician-assisted suicide case the Ninth Circuit ruled that Washington's law impinged on what the court described as a constitutionally protected "liberty interest in choosing the time and manner of one's death." The appeals court derived this interest from a previous Supreme Court decision dealing with abortion, Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), that had defined constitutional liberty as including "matters involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime."

The Ninth Circuit also relied heavily on the Supreme Court's decision in the case of Nancy Cruzan. In Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Dept. of Health (1990), which involved a parents' request to terminate life-support for their daughter after she entered a permanent vegetative state, the Justices assumed -- without actually deciding -- that individuals have a constitutionally protected liberty interest in being able to refuse medical treatment, even if that refusal will bring on death.

Having found an individual liberty interest in controlling the manner of one's impending death, the Ninth Circuit then concluded that none of Washington's asserted interests in banning physician-assisted suicide -- such as its interest in preserving life or in protecting terminally ill patients from somehow being coerced into ending their lives -- was sufficiently compelling to justify the law.

The Second Circuit's analysis in the New York case, Vacco v. Quill (1996), proceeded very differently. The Second Circuit based its analysis on the fact that under New York law terminally ill patients on life-support systems have a legal right to turn off their machines. In the Second Circuit's view, terminally ill patients who want to receive life-ending medications are "similarly situated" to (and therefore deserve to be treated the same as) terminally ill patients seeking to have their machines turned off. Yet New York law lets patients on life support hasten their deaths by refusing further treatment while forbidding terminally ill patients from obtaining life-ending medications.

The Second Circuit saw no "rational" reason for distinguishing between these two situations. For example, it rejected the argument that allowing a terminally ill patient to refuse treatment simply removes an artificial obstacle to a "natural" death, while providing life-ending medication requires a much more affirmative and life-destructive act by the doctor. Because the Second Circuit found that New York could not justify its differing treatment of these two categories of patients, it struck down the state's physician-assisted suicide ban as violating the Constitution's guarantee of "equal protection of the laws."

These, of course, are merely the technical legal grounds for the decisions that you are now reviewing. More generally, the physician-assisted suicide cases put the Court at the uneasy intersection of social morality, medical ethics, rapidly evolving technology, and law. They also force the Court to confront what its own role should be in settling such matters. In other words: Is this a matter properly resolved in the courts? Or does the Constitution entrust it to the elected branches of government? On that point it is worth noting that even if the Court does not recognize a right to physician-assisted suicide, individual state legislatures would still be free to do so. Such a ruling would also leave state legislatures free to outlaw physician-assisted suicide, as many already have.

To help you decide these cases, dozens of interested parties -- from medical groups to state legislators to religious organizations -- have bombarded the Supreme Court with briefs. But to assist you in your decision I have also prepared excerpts from the oral arguments you have recently heard in these two cases.

Read the excerpted arguments for Vacco v. Quill

One question you may wish to consider is whether these cases can be decided in a way that does not impose a definitive resolution of the competing rights of patients, doctors, and the state. In other words, in deciding whether there is a liberty interest in assisted suicide, in balancing that interest against the state's interests, and in considering whether there is a meaningful difference between refusing medical treatment and obtaining assistance in suicide, you may want to craft a ruling that leaves room for experimentation and change as society continues to grapple with these relatively new end-of-life problems.

Please mark your decision in each case, and then write your opinion below. Naturally, what you decide will affect profoundly the extent to which we may be able to control the end of our lives. The nation anxiously awaits your opinion.

Washington v. Glucksberg

First, in the Ninth Circuit case challenging Washington state's ban on assisted suicide, you may:

1) Affirm the lower court's decision that all terminally ill individuals have a fundamental liberty right under the due-process clause to control the circumstances of their death and that the state's interests in preventing assisted suicide are not strong enough to override that right.

2) Reverse that lower-court decision by concluding that terminally ill patients have no fundamental right to have a physician's assistance in prematurely ending their lives. (This is Washington state's position.)

3) Reverse the lower-court decision by concluding that although terminally ill individuals do have some fundamental rights connected with controlling their deaths, the state's interests in preventing physician-assisted suicide override such rights.

In the New York case, in which the Second Circuit struck down the state's ban on physician-assisted suicide as a violation of the equal-protection clause, you may:

1) Affirm the lower court's ruling that New York has no rational reason for allowing terminally ill patients to hasten their deaths by refusing medical treatment while at the same time prohibiting such patients from attaining medical assistance in that process.

2) Reverse the lower court by concluding that New York has sufficient grounds for distinguishing between patients who hasten their own deaths by letting nature take its course and patients who want to involve physicians in this process. (This is New York state's position.)