Abstract

Much has been written about the process of legal change in the Netherlands and the remarkable role both the Dutch medical profession and the judiciary played in the creation of the actual legal control mechanism. In short, the legal profession itself consistently has argued in favour of a form of control that can be characterized as ‘proactive’, totally based on self-reporting by doctors as an alternative to the traditional model of ‘reactive’ criminal legal control by the prosecuting authorities. In essence, this policy was based on the assumption that only the former mechanism would fit the interest of both the profession and society at large.The following excerpt from the Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide Act reflects the lengthy debate in Dutch society on the issue of legal control on the behaviour of doctors terminating the life of their patients on their own request