The question of whether euthanasia and assisted suicide should be legalized is often treated as a universal, ethical question, transcending national boundaries and diverse legal systems. This book examines the impact of the choice of diverse legal routes towards legalization on the subsequent assisted dying regimes in operation.

The book begins with an examination of the unsuccessful attempts to use constitutionally entrenched human rights claims to challenge criminal prohibitions on assisted suicide which reached the highest courts in the United States, Canada and Europe. Their failure makes legalization through a rights-based claim unlikely in any major common law or European jurisdiction. Alternative routes towards legalization are then discussed, including the defence of necessity, by which euthanasia was effectively legalized in the Netherlands and an approach based on compassion which has been proposed in France, as well as the legislative approaches which have been taken in Oregon, Belgium and the Northern Territory of Australia. All of these approaches are compared in detail, with particular attention paid to the effectiveness and transferability of the ubiquitous slippery slope arguments

1. Introduction
2. Rights to Assisted Dying
3. The Effects of Rights
4. Duties and Necessity
5. Compassion
6. Comparing the Mechanisms of Legal Change
7. The Slippery Slope