"Let me put it very clearly," Dershowitz said. "You have no constitutional right to endanger the public and spread the disease, even if you disagree. You have no right not to be vaccinated, you have no right not to wear a mask, you have no right to open up your business."The 'but' is that I notice he didn't name the case. He's not wrong, but the precedents are not necessarily settled if they run deeply counter to the current sense of the American people. I think a lot of Americans would dissent from the Buck v. Bell SCOTUS ruling, from the Progressive era, that gave the state wide power to sterilize you against your will. For one thing it runs directly into the teeth of the reproductive rights movement. Although that is mostly about not reproducing, the logic of it is that reproduction is a kind of sacred and personal thing with which the state should never interfere.
The famed law professor added that if the disease in question is not contagious — for example, cancer — a person can refuse treatment.
He continued, "[But] If you refuse to be vaccinated [for a contagious disease], the state has the power to literally take you to a doctor's office and plunge a needle into your arm."
"You have no right to refuse to be vaccinated against a contagious disease," Dershowitz added. "Public health, the police power of the Constitution, gives the state the power to compel that. And there are cases in the United States Supreme Court."
So it may be that the smallpox era ruling would stand up today; but it also might be that it would not. People had a lot of faith in government's ability to do good in the early 1900s. That's not true today, and it's not true for reasons that are sometimes well-founded.
6 comments:
Dershowitz also is ignoring the Supreme Court's often repeated requirement that if a liberty of an individual is to be restricted for the greater good, that restriction must be by the least intrusive of the individual means.
Forcing a vaccination, plung[ing] a needle into your arm, is about as intrusive as it gets, especially when it's done to force a personal violation of a religious belief. Ignorance, in the end, only colors that intrusion; forced vaccination is no less an intrusion in that case.
A less intrusive means could include not allowing the non-vaccinated to mingle in public--other than among other non-vaccinateds--while they remain vulnerable to infecting others. That's intrusive as hell, too, but it doesn't force a violation of religious belief.
There are likely other less intrusive means, as well; the fact that a judge or a lawyer can't think of one, or chooses to not bother trying to think of one, doesn't mean they don't exist.
Eric Hines
"You have no constitutional right to endanger the public and spread the disease, even if you disagree."
I don't recall this being the standard during the early parts of the AIDs epidemic nor was there a quarantine or mandatory contact tracing, though the later was probably tried. Please correct me if my memory is way off. I don't think the professor's fear should negate my rights, nor does the risk from this appear to require mandatory vacinatoin of the entire population.
And if the vaccine kills? Or maims? Or gives rise to thalidomide styled babies?
Here's the thing- those pieces of excrement in the government have spent decades squandering the last traces of responsibility and integrity, and now, they expect us to trust them? (cue in the snake from Disney's jungle book.)
The deeper question is who owns us?
And who decides what a danger we are?
Or what danger our actions pose?
Start down this road and it's becomes quite easy to justify any action "for the public good". My father used to rant about seatbelt laws, and helmet laws, and the like, for the same reason- if a general cost to society can used to restrict individual freedom, there is no limit to the potential restrictions. I have long maintained this is the key issue in the climate wars, given the environment affects everyone,any action can be interpreted as harmful to the commons and thus subject to control.
Heh- of course the left finds it apparently impossible to understand that someone can simultaneously think the law is an overreaching burden on freedom, yet pay extra to have seat belts installed as an option in their brand new 1965 Rambler- as my father did.
A larger percentage of the population were immigrants then as well, who likely figured it wasn't wise to give the government an excuse to kick them out.
"Least restrictive alternative" is also an important element of the law, a E. Hines correctly notes. The law also recognises a distinction between temporary emergency measures and permanent ones.
a d obeys authority. normal. if state says report your neighbors and family for violations... humans will obey. Some will not, of course. They tend to get hanged, crucified, burned alive by their fellows.
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