Paternalism and Euthanasia: The Case of Diane Pretty before the European Court of Human Rights

The aim of this article is to examine the moral justifiability of paternalism in the case of active voluntary euthanasia (assisted suicide) as represented in the Pretty v UK decision of the European Court of Human Rights. There are three approaches towards the justification of paternalism, corresponding to the three main trends of normative ethics. Deontological theories place personal autonomy in the centre of paternalism and focus on the voluntariness of self-harming decisions. The utilitarian approach determines justifiability by aggregating the positive and negative consequences of paternalistic interventions. Virtue ethics shifts the emphasis from the subject of paternalism to the paternalistic actor and requires him or her to act out of moral character, as virtuous people would do. Thus, the justifiability of paternalism depends on the question whether paternalism exhibits some form of virtuous practice or not. Overall, I argue that the kind of paternalistic prohibition involved in the Pretty case qualifies as unjustified paternalism under any of the three normative ethical theories.