Kathryn Tucker

Kathryn Tucker (born 1959) is and American attorney and the executive director of the End of Life Liberty Project, which she founded during her tenure as executive director of the Disability Rights Legal Center. She graduated from Georgetown University Law Center in 1985 and Hampshire College in 1981. Tucker has been an adjunct law professor at Lewis and Clark School of Law, Seattle University the University of Washington, Loyola/LA and Hastings. Beginning in 1990, while an attorney at the Seattle firm of Perkins Coie, she did pro bono work for Washington Citizens for Death with Dignity, which led her into the movement to expand end of life liberty. As legal director of Compassion & Choices in 1997 Tucker argued Washington v. Glucksberg before the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to establish a federal constitutional right to choose aid in dying; the Court referred the issue to the states. The Glucksberg case is widely recognized as prompting widespread effort to improve end of life care. Tucker successfully defended the Oregon Death with Dignity Act from attacks from the federal legislature and the U.S. Department of Justice. She represented terminally ill Oregonians challenging the law by former United States Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales, in Oregon v. Gonzales. The Oregon law was upheld by the United States Supreme Court. Tucker was a lead author of a California law requiring pain management education for physicians, which passed in 2001. Tucker defends physicians who face prosecution for adequate pain management. She has published numerous articles on end-of-life issues in law, medicine and health policy journals.

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