Cite as: 521 U. S. 702 (1997)
Stevens, J., concurring in judgments
of those States, however, we found that some applications of the statutes were unconstitutional.4
Today, the Court decides that Washington's statute prohibiting assisted suicide is not invalid "on its face," that is to say, in all or most cases in which it might be applied.5 That holding, however, does not foreclose the possibility that some applications of the statute might well be invalid.
As originally filed, Washington v. Glucksberg presented a challenge to the Washington statute on its face and as it applied to three terminally ill, mentally competent patients and to four physicians who treat terminally ill patients. After the District Court issued its opinion holding that the statute placed an undue burden on the right to commit physician-assisted suicide, see Compassion in Dying v. Washington, 850 F. Supp. 1454, 1462, 1465 (WD Wash. 1994), the three patients died. Although the Court of Appeals considered the constitutionality of the statute "as applied to the prescription of life-ending medication for use by terminally ill, competent adult patients who wish to hasten their deaths," Compassion in Dying v. Washington, 79 F. 3d 790, 798 (CA9 1996), the court did not have before it any individual plaintiff seeking to hasten her death or any doctor who was threatened with prosecution for assisting in the suicide of a particular patient; its analysis and eventual holding that the statute was unconstitutional was not limited to a particular set of plaintiffs before it.
The appropriate standard to be applied in cases making facial challenges to state statutes has been the subject of debate within this Court. See Janklow v. Planned Parenthood, Sioux Falls Clinic, 517 U. S. 1174 (1996). Upholding the validity of the federal Bail Reform Act of 1984, the Court stated in United States v. Salerno, 481 U. S. 739 (1987), that a "facial challenge to a legislative Act is, of course, the most
4 See, e. g., Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U. S. 420 (1980); Enmund v. Florida, 458 U. S. 782 (1982); Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U. S. 302 (1989).
5 See ante, at 709, n. 6.
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