State Neutrality, Moral Pluralism and the Parliamentary Decision on Assisted Suicide

Abstract

The neutrality of a state towards different theories of its citizens’ conceptions of the good life is an essential core of liberal, pluralistic constitutions. The purpose of this article is to analyze the extent to which various types of neutrality stated in the German constitution were respected in the parliamentary decision on assisted suicide. The author finds that the German Bundestag did not act in a sufficiently neutral way with regard to opportunities and justification when parliament made its decision to prohibit business-like assistance to suicide (“Geschaftsmasige Forderung der Selbsttotung”, § 217 Strafgesetzbuch). The law’s justification shows that the members of the German Bundestag mistakenly interpret the different concepts of conscience in Articles 4 and 38 Grundgesetz identically. In doing so, the majority of parliament has turned its individual moral concepts of good dying into a generally valid law by majority decision. As a result, the German Bundestag has considerably restricted the implementation of pluralistic moral theories of good dying that deviate from the one within the law, and thereby also the constitutionally guaranteed individual freedom of conscience of the citizens.