Luis Kutner (June 9, 1908 – March 1, 1993), was a US human rights activist, FBI informant,[1] and lawyer who was on the National Advisory Council of the US branch of Amnesty International during its early years[2] and created the concept of a living will.
[4][5] He was a founder of World Habeas Corpus,[6] an organization created to fight for international policies which would protect individuals against unwarranted imprisonment.
[10] Kutner gained national recognition[11] in 1949, when he obtained freedom for a black mechanic from Waukegan, Illinois, James Montgomery, who had served 26 years of a life term sentence for raping an itinerant.
He also helped free Hungarian Cardinal József Mindszenty, American fascist poet Ezra Pound, former Congo President Moise Tshombe and represented the Dalai Lama and Tibet.
[19] In this paper, Kutner showed some sympathy with the propagators of “death on request” (active euthanasia), but stressed that a living will “authorizing mercy killing” would be “contrary to public policy”.
[20] For example, in 1987 he wrote in the University of Detroit Law Review: “The Living Will is a means for the individual to manage his death by protective guidelines and is premised on the informed consent of the person prior to an irreversible coma or a state of being disabled or maimed.