Judge Stephen Reinhardt is pleased with himself, and no wonder. Discovering a new constitutional right is no longer quite as rare as finding an El Greco in your attic, but a lot of judges obviously yearn to do it and Reinhardt succeeded. Peering deep into the Constitution with his colleagues on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, he discovered something nobody had known was lying around in there for 200-plus years: a constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide for the terminally ill. "I think this may be my best ever," the proud inventor of this brand-new right told the Wall Street Journal. The Journal described him as someone known on all sides as "a crafty advocate for his left-leaning views" who once wrote a blistering letter to the Clinton administration complaining that it wasn't appointing enough judges as ideologically firm as himself. (He is a Carter appointee.)
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