The human rights dimension of the Diane Pretty case.

Abstract

In a judgment awaited with great apprehension, the House of Lords on 29 November 2001 refused Diane Pretty’s application to compel the Director of Public Prosecutions to give her and her husband prior assurance that her husband would not be prosecuted under section 2(1) of the Suicide Act 1961, were he to help her to commit suicide some time in the not too distant future, when she would clearly have communicated her wish to quit this world, but would, on account of her physical condition, be unable to accomplish her objective without the assistance of another person. The European Court of Human Rights subsequently confirmed that the exceptionless prohibition of assisted suicide, even in so far as it indirectly prevented a person in Mrs. Pretty’s physical predicament from committing suicide at all, was compatible with the United Kingdom’s obligations towards Mrs. Pretty under the European Convention on Human Rights. At the same time, there are important discrepancies between the analysis of the human rights issues in the House of Lords and the reasoning of the European Court of Human Rights. Had their Lordships realised that the scope of protection afforded to personal autonomy under the Convention includes the making of autonomous choices even in matters of life and death, and that the particularly burdensome effects of the domestic law on persons like Mrs. Pretty stood in need of separate and particular justification under Article 14, the outcome of the case might have been a different one.