The Case for Overturning a 1905 Precedent Allowing Vaccine Mandates

The recent debate around the Biden’s administration and other types of vaccine mandates forefronts the question of legality of such mandates. The best legal precedent we must base our understanding of the question is an old U.S. Supreme Court case, Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905), a ruling that sustained a regulation in Cambridge, Massachusetts mandating the vaccination of all citizens against smallpox. While never overturned explicitly by any Supreme Court Case, the evolution of personal liberty, specifically bodily autonomy, constructed by the Supreme Court’s rulings in several cases since 1905 may prove enough to overturn the case. The Court has come to favor personal liberty over state power more often in the more than a century since Jacobson. Thus, a contemporary case asking the same question will almost certainly be overturned.