Re: Public health, 'On this day, the Supreme Court rules on vaccines and public health.
(MANDATING vaccines)
'On February 20, 1905, the Supreme Court, by a 7-2 majority, said in Jacobson v. Massachusetts that the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts could fine residents who refused to receive smallpox injections. In 1901, a smallpox epidemic swept through the Northeast and Cambridge, and Massachusetts reacted by requiring all adults receive smallpox inoculations subject to a $5 fine. In 1902, Pastor Henning Jacobson, suggesting that he and his son both were injured by previous vaccines, refused to be vaccinated and to pay the fine. In state court, Jacobson argued the vaccine law violated the Massachusetts and federal constitutions. The state courts, including the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, rejected his claims. Before the Supreme Court, Jacobson argued that, “compulsion to introduce disease into a healthy system is a violation of liberty.”
On February 20, 1905, the Supreme Court rejected Jacobson’s arguments. Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote about the police power of states to regulate for the protection of public health: “The good and welfare of the Commonwealth, of which the legislature is primarily the judge, is the basis on which the police power rests in Massachusetts,” Harlan said “upon the principle of self-defense, of paramount necessity, a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members.”'>>>
https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/blog/on-this-day-the-supreme-court-rules-on-vaccines-and-public-health
(New book, being discussed NOW on AfterWords, CSpan2 Book TV) John Witt, American Contagions)