Jacobson v. Massachusetts has become the catchall decision for justifying all kinds of pandemic countermeasures. I had not looked into the matter in detail, as I am not a lawyer (thank God). However, I ran across an article on SSRN from Josh Blackman (one of the writers at The Volokh Conspiracy) that dismantles how a decision to allow a jurisdiction to levy a fine equivalent to a parking ticket for the refusal to receive a vaccination against one of the most deadly diseases known to man (smallpox is a Risk Group 4 select agent, alongside Ebola and its relatives; by comparison, anthrax and the Black Death are merely Risk Group 3) mutated like a virus into allowing all kinds of measures under the rubric of public health.

It is perhaps unsurprising that the most disturbing U.S. Supreme Court decision to remain on the books as good case law plays a role here. Buck v. Bell is the infamous decision that allowed for the state to forcibly perform medical procedures on people without their consent to uphold the good of the gene pool, giving us the infamous line that “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” As if forcing a person to be fixed like a stray dog is not bad enough, there is evidence that Carrie Buck was not even mentally handicapped, nor was her honor student child, and she was likely set up by her lawyer, who was either horrendously incompetent or actually in favor of negative eugenics. You could use this decision to justify forced medical procedures on every person who holds a political position unpopular with political elites.