What Makes Vaccine Mandates Legal?

Zeedox

Resident Canadian
Dec 1, 2020
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Canada's Ocean Playground

When it comes to vaccination, the Supreme Court has fairly consistently found that mandatory vaccinations are constitutional. On this and a range of other issues, the highest court has generally found that while freedom of belief may be absolute, freedom of action is not. There is no liberty to infect others with a communicable disease, just as there is no liberty to murder.

In the perpetual balancing act of constitutional liberties, the court has typically decided that government’s duty to safeguard the health of its citizens takes priority over some individual rights.
 
I posted about that the other day. It's the Jacobson v. Massachusetts case. The ruling stated:

“Real liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own, whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others.”

 
Sorry about that. It's a very interesting read.

The liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States does not import an absolute right in each person to be at all times, and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint, nor is it an element in such liberty that one person, or a minority of persons residing in any community and enjoying the benefits of its local government, should have power to dominate the majority when supported in their action by the authority of the State.

A very common sense approach by the court. The needs of the many outweigh the rights of the few.