CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: It’s the first Monday in October, and that means the beginning of a new term for the U.S. Supreme Court. On the docket are a wide spectrum of cases ranging from physician-assisted suicide to sexual harassment. We get a preview now of the term ahead from NewsHour regular Stuart Taylor, correspondent for the American Lawyer and Legal Times. Stuart, it’s nice to see you again after a summer’s respite. How would you characterize the court docket for the coming term? STUART TAYLOR, The American Lawyer: It’s a very full docket with a great range of very important cases, but I think the ones that tower above the others, the ones that will maybe ten years from now really look like seminal cases are the two physician-assisted suicide cases from the states of Washington and New York in which lower courts struck down laws that bar doctors from helping patients hasten death when the patients are suffering.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Mm-hmm. And so what are they considering here?

MR. TAYLOR: Uh, the issue for the Supreme Court is whether there’s a constitutional right for a patient who is terminally ill, who is competent, and who wants to hasten death because the patient’s in pain or otherwise suffering, for that patient to ask his doctor to give him or her a lethal injection, for example, and for the doctor to go ahead and do it, because the problem, as perceived by those who support this, is that it’s illegal almost everywhere for doctors to do that, and has been since time immemorial. The Hippocratic Oath bars it.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And the constitutional principle that’s being–that is at issue here–