So it comes out that the juveniles cannot really make accountable decisions when it comes to killing people, unless it is themselves. Or to put it differently, Belgium will not hold children responsible when they hurt others, but gives them free license to hurt themselves. Perversely, in Belgium, the youths who are considered grown up enough to be euthanized have not done anything wrong at all, unlike Simmons, who tied up his victim and thew him off a bridge.

Belgium’s law shows the folly of basing constitutional decisions on the practice of other countries: though we all eat at McDonalds, American and Belgian notions of decency are fundamentally different. In American, an age-unlimited euthanasia law would be unthinkable, in Belgium it apparently has 75 percent popular support. American intellectual elites became uncomfortable being the only Western nation with a juvenile death penalty; the Belgians do not blush at standing out.

Roper was wrong to look across the seas, and the campaigners against the 16-18 year old death penalty were wrong to accept the conceit of European moral superiority and American ugliness. But to the extent that Roper did base its decision on a theoretically unified consensus about juvenile responsibility, Belgium’s action, which may be followed by other northern European countries, gives an occasion to overrule it.