Though they differ in their reasoning, both rulings raise the prospect that the Supreme Court will soon be compelled to consider the right-to-die issue and point the way toward a constitutionally correct result.

Respecting and promoting patient control has been one of the driving forces behind the hospice movement and right-to-die issues that range from honoring living wills to promoting euthanasia (mercy killing).

But last November, the Missouri Supreme Court took a very different approach to the right-to-die issue in the case now before the Justices.

Nancy K. Rhoden, a law professor at the University of North Carolina who specializes in right-to-die issues, said the Missouri decision was "totally anomalous."

The Schiavo case differed from the Quinlan and Cruzan cases by involving settled law rather than breaking new legal ground on the right-to-die issue.

If the Supreme Court wants to address the right-to-die issue without invoking its abortion precedents, Judge Calabresi's analysis shows the way.

And the claim that the nation has not debated the right-to-die issue is spurious.

The Court had never before addressed any aspect of the right-to-die issue that has commanded considerable attention from state courts and legislatures for the past 15 years.

It has largely been women like Karen Ann Quinlan and Nancy Cruzan who have brought the right-to-die issue, with its medical-ethics questions, before the American public.

The speed with which the right-to-die issue, before the Court for the first time, has galvanized public opinion is perhaps explained by its universality.