Durham, N.C. - The Supreme Court now has before it an important opportunity to make clear that state governments have the authority to enact death with dignity laws. Efforts to pass laws allowing physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients have been mounted from Hawaii to Maine, though Oregon remains the lone state with an active Death With Dignity Act.

Since taking office in 2001, members of the Bush Administration have worked to dismantle the Oregon law, signaling to other states that similar enactments are highly unwelcome. The Supreme Court should reject the ill-advised attempt by the federal government to prevent such state laws.

In 1994, Oregon voters approved an initiative to allow physician-assisted suicide. Oregon's Death With Dignity Act authorizes physicians to prescribe lethal doses of controlled substances to terminally ill residents according to procedures designed to protect vulnerable patients and ensure that their decisions are reasoned and voluntary. In 1997, Oregon voters rejected an initiative that would have repealed this law, reaffirming their desire to access compassionate care at the end of life.

There were several efforts to try to have Congress, by statute, preempt the Oregon law by prohibiting the use of prescription drugs in physician-assisted suicides. Each of these attempts at federal legislation failed.

Being unable to stop Oregon's law by legislation, opponents took another approach: they asked Attorney General Janet Reno to announce that doctors who participate in physician-assisted suicide would lose their ability to write prescriptions. The federal Controlled Substances Act authorizes the attorney general to revoke a physician's ability to prescribe medication if it's determined the physician has "committed such acts as would render his registration ... inconsistent with the public interest." The law, enacted in 1970 as part of the "war on drugs," was clearly about giving the federal government the authority to stop doctors who were fueling illegal drug transactions by writing large numbers of prescriptions for controlled substances.

Reno refused this request and explained that the federal government had no authority to overturn Oregon's choice. She emphasized that regulation of physicians was historically left to state governments and that the federal statute could not be stretched to take away Oregon's power to allow physician-assisted suicide.

This is clearly correct as a matter of federal law, and especially as a matter of federalism. But upon becoming attorney general, John Ashcroft issued a directive that sought to stop physician-assisted suicide in Oregon by criminalizing medical procedures specifically authorized by state law. The Ashcroft Directive proclaims that physician-assisted suicide serves no "legitimate medical purpose" and that the federal government could revoke the power to issue prescriptions for any Oregon doctor who assists a dying patient, "regardless of whether state law...permits such conduct by practitioners."

Both a federal district court in Oregon and the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled against the attorney general and held that the federal government had no authority to stop Oregon's Death with Dignity Act. The courts explained that the federal statute relied on by the attorney general did not permit intrusion into a state's authority to regulate medical care within its borders. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court granted review.

The Supreme Court must use this opportunity to affirm the authority of state governments to choose for themselves whether to allow physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients. The Ashcroft Directive has the federal government, through fiat by the attorney general, taking over an area -- regulating the practice of medicine -- that always has been left to the states. Conservatives, including the current Supreme Court, have throughout American history proclaimed the importance of federalism and states' rights. Now is the time for the Supreme Court to be true to that commitment to states' rights and uphold the law adopted by Oregon's voters.

The Oregon experience shows the many positive developments that come from recognizing the fundamental personal right to choose the manner of one's death. In its seven-year history, the law has been activated by a scant 171 people, a fraction of the eligible Oregonians who have passed this world. But myriad personal accounts reveal that the act has comforted thousands of irreversibly ill patients who found the safety net of physician assistance a tempering force against impending death. Moreover, the law's presence has been linked with advances in palliative, comfort and hospice care, all essential allies on the journey home.

No choice is more deeply personal or more profoundly important than whether to live in pain or die in peace. We have seen terminally ill individuals in great pain begging to have a physician help end their suffering. That should be the right of every person, a right the federal government has no moral or legal authority to usurp.