Rights of the Terminally Ill Act 1995 from the federal parliament. Consequently, the federal parliament retains the right to legislate for the territory, including the right to territory laws. In practice, it very rarely exercised that right. On 25 March 1997, the federal parliament passed the "Euthanasia Laws Act 1997", which, although not technically repealing the "Rights of the Terminally Ill Act", for all practical purposes rendered it of no legal effect. Rather than repeal the Act directly, the law instead amended the "Northern Territory (Self-Government) Act 1978", the act under which the Commonwealth Parliament has delegated legislative power to the Northern Territory Parliament—effectively the territory's "constitution"
Gerald A. Larue Humphry asked him to head it. Larue became founding president of the Hemlock Society aimed to provide information to the terminally ill and legalize physician-assisted suicide. "He stepped up to the plate when others were afraid," Humphry said. "He presided over Hemlock with great diplomacy when it was highly sensitive and controversial — when America was just beginning to address the subject of the hot-button topic of the right to choose to die when at life's end." Larue served for eight years, until Humphry moved the Hemlock Society to Oregon in 1988. Larue argued that the secular state must be