Is It Now Institutionally Appropriate for the Courts to Consider Whether the Assisted Dying Ban is Human Rights Compatible? Conway v Secretary of State for Justice.

Noel Conway has ultimately been granted permission to apply for judicial review, to seek a declaration under section 4(2) Human Rights Act 1998 that section 2(1) Suicide Act 1961 is incompatible with his right to respect for private life under Article 8(1) ECHR. Both decisions in the application process are significant. They attempt to deal with the qualitative elements in the reasoning of Lords Neuberger, Mance and Wilson, in Nicklinson v Ministry of Justice: what Parliament is required to have done to have 'satisfactorily addressed' the question of relaxing or modifying section 2(1) Suicide Act. In failing to consider the explicit use of qualitative reasoning, both courts fail to interpret Nicklinson properly-that Parliament must change the law, with a declaration of incompatibility likely if it failed to do so. The Court of Appeal was correct to overrule the High Court's unqualified approach to whether it was now institutionally appropriate for a court to consider issuing a declaration of incompatibility, for the purposes of granting permission to apply for judicial review. However, the Court of Appeal directly signals their belief that a range of primary evidence bears out a system of assisted suicide for those in Mr Conway's position could feasibly be devised. This question though, as to evidence of a feasible system in the future, is irrelevant to whether permission to apply for judicial review should be granted to argue it is institutionally appropriate to make a declaration of incompatibility regarding current legislation. This is a problem Nicklinson has made for assisted dying and incompatibility debates.