Rodgriguez Vs British ColumbiaRodgriguez Vs British ColumbiaNovember 4, 2006Hon. Justice John SopinkaSupreme Court of Canada301 Wellington St.Ottawa, OntarioK1A OJ1Re: Rodriguez v. British Columbia (Attorney General)As the majority writer in the case of Rodriguez v. British Columbia, you are well aware that this case has and will become a case that will be infamous with ethics vs. the law. You are well aware of the facts and I need not to reiterate them to you. I write to you in response to the courts final decision that was rendered on September 30, 1993. Sue Rodriguez was denied her appeal that section 241(b) of the criminal code violated sections 7, 12 and 15(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Rodriguez, 1). It is undoubtedly a verdict that used basic ethical decision making principles and theory to deny Sue Rodriguez her rights.
[Footnote 1] See, e.g., the Ontario Court of Appeal’s ruling in Rodriguez v. British Columbia (Attorney General) v. British Columbia (Attorney General) (1997) 24SC 517, 570-572; the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Rodriguez v. British Columbia (Attorney General) (2008) 26SC 635, 638. In either case, the courts relied on specific ethical principles, which were applied to all circumstances and the individual involved was entitled to pursue her claim under the highest standard of scrutiny which the courts laid down in Rodriguez. Such a standard has held that, in a case like Rodriguez v. British Columbia, there is every possibility that a claim could not be rejected on ethical grounds because the person may have a legitimate and fundamental right of return to that where a claim is asserted. Since there is no such general, legal standard of scrutiny in the civil sphere, I cannot say in a way that you are familiar with whether a claim is entitled to a particular ethical standard, but I can tell you that not being in a state of uncertainty can result in an ethics judgment which is not appropriate when one is pursuing other claims or in a time when other people are being held accountable for their actions – for example, in a civil defamation lawsuit when the plaintiff can no longer get compensation. That does not excuse you from seeking the kind of judicial oversight that, on its face, is more adequate to enable the court to consider and decide the merits and not the technical nuances of appeal.
[Footnote 2] The Ontario Supreme Court made an affix to Section 23(b) of the Criminal Code that requires a person to file a civil suit alleging that it violated copyright law. “Criminal Code section 23(b)” will be explained below. The Act defines “criminal crime” as:
A person who is convicted of an offence under any law of a Member State or of any Territory under the common law, except as provided in paragraph 3, commits an offence punishable on conviction, by imprisonment for ten years or by a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars ($10,000). Any person convicted under any criminal statute and subject to an order may file a civil suit and file it as a matter of criminal law for a specified period. No person may file a civil suit in the place where the suit has been filed.”
The Act provides criminal law for criminal proceedings as long as the proceedings are in the public interest, and only where there is a strong and compelling moral need to pursue the cause and the costs to people involved and to the plaintiff. The civil rights lawyer is required by the Act to take legal action based on the facts of any civil suit to avoid having to prosecute an individual for engaging in an activity allegedly “conspiring” to infringe on the rights or interests of the claimants in the settlement that was not at the time the subject matter of the suit. It makes clear that civil suit may not be commenced as an action for breach of contract or non-disclosure of fact, but only for breach of promises or guarantees made to the person by the claimant in connection with that action.
On behalf of the Honour Honourable Justice McCrory, I would like to make the following points.
The Honour the Sovereign Justice of Canada wrote
It is obvious why this case and especially its verdict has caused such an uproar with ethicists and society. The ethical dilemma presented in this case is whether Canadian law has the authority to prohibit Sue Rodriguez the right to pursue physician assisted suicide as a way to end her life.
The most prominent ethical principle that was used against Sue Rodriguez was Respect for Persons. This ethical principal states “individuals should be treated as autonomous agents, and persons with diminished autonomy are entitled to protection” (Levine, XXII). Sue Rodriguez in this case was simply exercising her right to autonomy. When diagnosed and given her grim prognosis she was informed of her range of options and the devastating painful outcome of death, which is one the key factors of this ethical principle. The person must be given all the necessary information in order for them to be able to make an ethical decision. Sue Rodriguez was simply trying to control the manner in which she died. The court room argued she was of diminished autonomy and that another party must look out for her best interests. Sue Rodriguez was in control of her mind and actions, the only thing she could not control was how quickly her illness was killing her and the ability to kill herself without the aid of another person. The court’s decision that “it is society’s obligation to preserve life and protect the vulnerable outweighed her rights” (CBC), is the prime example of the misuse of Respect for Persons.
The second ethical principal that was misused in this case was justice. The basis of Sue Rodriguez’s case was to receive the “right” to “what she deserves” (Levine, xxii). The principal of justice is also based on “those equal should be treated equally” (Levine, xxiv). I think a large part of the reason why justice was used incorrectly in your decision is because you failed to give Sue her equality. Although her health was ailing, her mind and her spirit were that of any other person in society. I believe that your justice gave her a status of an unequal due to her condition. If in the eye of justice we can’t all receive the same treatment and be classified equals, what is the point of a law governing body? The court of law must be delivered equality to its entire governing citizens. No one person should be treated better or worse than another.
“I know there are many people who would not have been able to believe the court of law could not stand up in unison to her request for equal treatment. Yet, a recent study‖found that a majority of its members responded to your questions with only a very tiny number of words of assistance that the justice system allowed them to answer. This could have been because they wanted to express their satisfaction within a legally ambiguous (i.e., non-specific) language, or they really didn’t care that, as far as I’m aware, the justice system ever allowed them to express that they wanted equality in a given situation, so they were simply not going to be able to act on their own. It may have a couple of uses in this article: 1) To provide an example of how the system works; and 2) To let people ask the questions you asked it to and tell it the answer they want; and finally, that it was a very good idea to put out a short essay about it in the hopes of putting it to post and in your own personal blog, especially since, more than anything else, you’ve probably spent some time in one of your blogs with some of the more popular answers. So please let’s take a look at Sue and the other problems she faced during her interview at the Department of Justice:
I didn’t hear from the justice system until I finished a series of interviews. I wasn’t even sure where I live (and if I was moving to New Orleans) but it was around early 1990s (in New Orleans at least). At my elementary school, it wasn’t unusual to have students ask for answers about where I live. In the same way I don’t know if I’m living out of state or where I live, but I would like to make certain I’m not too close to anything. In the case of the University of Wisconsin at Wisconsin, the students gave me answers. If I was going to make an offer of equality, my offer that I could make would be to move to Madison, Wis., and I could make $10,000 a year (in order to pay the tuition on my first year at UW) and go there for a year, and the students refused to take it—and to the point that when I heard from them again, they said that UW would pay for me to move to Wisconsin before that. I could have offered $20,000 for three years, but there was not a deal that would give me more money or that would give me less tuition. No one wanted to spend my life waiting for a good deal of money. I want to be treated well, I want to be treated humanely.
I have heard and seen many of the same things over the years—that students didn’t want to move to Wisconsin, that professors didn’t tell students what to do (the other students in my class didn’t learn it and many students were never told what to do, not even to tell them about it), that all teachers didn’t get promoted to the job (when in fact the teacher didn’t get promoted until at least the 1990s), that a lot of lawyers didn’t give the student the rights as lawyers or teachers or the right to seek dismissal based on that
If the teleological theory had been applied correctly to this case the outcome would have been different. The teleological theory is “is a theory of moral obligation-that looks at what produces the most good and the least harm for all concerned” (Levine XIX). What would have produced the most good in this case would have been to grant Sue Rodriguez the ability to commit physician assisted suicide. It would have relieved the suffering of her family, physicians and caregiver’s medical obligation’s, and most importantly give Sue Rodriguez a dignified death. The outcome that the court chose deterred all those who had found a “dignified manner of dying” (CBC) in physician assisted suicide.
The theory of natural law when applied to this case can be said to have been used correctly but ultimately against Sue Rodriguez. According to this theory “actions are morally right if they accord with our nature as human beings”