Is it time to consider compulsory vaccinations?

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Making Medical Decisions for the Profoundly Mentally Disabled - Norman L. Cantor - Google Books...

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general discussion of the 4th amendment and bodily intrusion.

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I don't see much to support your claims in either link, especially the second: It is certainly clear that a sufficiently strong government interest - such as public health, perhaps? - can override such applications of the 4th Amendment.

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I note that your statement includes a question at the end. Given that, I don't have any issue with it. On the other hand, I disagree completely that the material I linked to does not describe an entirely relevant privacy right.

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The first link dealt with something that could easily be seen as a search, and therefore the 4th Amendment obviously applied. As such it gives little support to more general applications, where there is no obvious element of "search" or "seizure".

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And let's note that case law upholding vaccinations is only for the limited laws that we have right now. Namely requiring vaccinations for attending public school, for being part of the armed forces, etc. But as has been pointed out, there is no compelling need or requirement for 100% vaccination of the population. A critical mass of ninety something percent is completely attainable.

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Maybe. But if general insistence on vaccination is the most equitable way of arranging that then there is a case for going for it.

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Before we start rounding up people at gun point...

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Why are you resorting to such an obvious "poisoning the well" ?

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I'm not saying there is not an argument.

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And if that argument is strong enough it can override the presumed 4th Amendment protections

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Here I'll just suggest that you are reading the amendment too literally and that the case law supports extends a bit further than you say here

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No, I'm saying that if that is true you chose the wrong case, because the case that you chose did not demonstrate any such extension.

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Refusing to allow you to have an abortion is not literally a search or seizure either

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According to Wikipedia that was decided under the 14th Amendment, not the 4th (the 9th was also argued, but it isn't a 4th Amendment case)

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Many of our privacy rights are exactly the same kind of stretch you don't make here.

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That doesn't mean that such stretches are good jurisprudence. Nor does it change the fact that you are doing a poor job of supporting your assertions

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That's right, PaulK. If. And the government may still be required to try less intrusive means first.

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Which shows that the answer to your question: is: "we don't need to do anything".

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I don't think so, PaulK. Let's recall that prior to my posting that material there was at least one person here who took the position that there was no right against bodily intrusion at all. I think the bullet case is on point for that, and I think the more general discussion sufficiently makes the rest of the point.

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The bullet case is rather clearly restricted to retrieving evidence, rather than establishing a more general right. And notes that case law is mixed - compelled blood tests and psychiatric examinations have been permitted.And as I pointed out, the other article indicates that vaccinations may well be constitutionally acceptable even given the expansion.

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And at this point, we part company because you finally get to the point of pretending that the issues you stated tentatively up till now have all been resolved

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But we DON'T need to do anything. If there's a decent case for mandatory vaccination the 4th Amendment isn't a block. Even with the expanded interpretation you prefer - which was far from settled at the time of the "bullet case" verdict.All of that is from the sources you offered. If you choose sources that don't support your point that is your problem.And if you claim that we DO need to do something about the 4th Amendment, that's hardly a tentative view, is it ? So it seems that you are the one abandoning tentativity.

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The state may well find that the measures required before getting around to compelling people to be vaccinated make the compulsion completely unnecessary and thus not allowable as the compelling interest will have vanished. Or the state might just have to take a different approach entirely.

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On the other hand if they have a decent case for mandatory vaccination there is a very good chance that it will get through.But if you have to run away because I believe your sources go on and do it.

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There is actually a bit more going on than that. A quick perusal of the opinion shows the court repeatedly discussing a final recognizing a right of privacy that defeats bodily intrusion.

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The protection is always considered in the context of an attempt to gather evidence. And I'll note that far from considering the law to establish any general protection the judge has to specifically consider the role of the subject in a trial.

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What if the bullets had instead been embedded in the defendant? What obstacle would the state had encountered in trying to get the bullets?

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None, because the defendant was the one demanding that the bullets be retrieved. If that had not been the case, then the judge would have applied the case law dealing with defendants rights.

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So clearly there is something else going on here other treating a person's body as they would a wall . The defendant was unable to get a court order to retrieve the bullets. It's clear that there is something peculiar about the bullets being embedded in a body rather than a wall that makes a substantial difference.

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But that is true even without an extending the 4th Amendment beyond "searches and seizures". An "unreasonable search" has to be both "unreasonable" and "a search". So yes, there must be something going on beyond the request being considered "a search" - it must be "unreasonable".

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In what sense is such an examination a literal search and seizure? If it is not such a thing, why would the court use it for a comparison? Perhaps because search and seizure is not so literally interpreted.

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I guess that you are missing the point that it was allowed. If it happened to be allowed because it was not considered a "search" that is worse for your position than if it was considered "reasonable". Certainly it is more reasonable to extend 4th Amendment protections to actions that may be considered searches, in that they are attempts to gather evidence for a trial, than actions which have nothing to do with gathering evidence or a court trial at all.

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And as for whether the court was actually ruling on whether there was a right of privacy that protected against government intrusion into the body, perhaps this statement would be helpful if it could be found in the opinion:

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It is certainly helpful to note that the rights are specifically related to court cases, and that protection may vary according to the role of the subject of the search in that trial. Such considerations militate against any extension to a general right to bodily integrity out of the context of a trial.

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Throughout the case, the court explicitly distinguishes the right it is recognizing from the right literally afforded by the fourth amendment.

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In fact it does not. The best you can find is quotes that do not mention the context of gathering evidence for a criminal trial. But read on and that context comes crashing back.

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I disagree that a 'decent case' is sufficient when a fundamental right is involved.

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Given that this "fundamental right" isn't even explicitly in the Constitution and that the intrusion is minor and overwhelmingly beneficial - and has been allowed in past cases - a decent case should be sufficient.

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The bullet case was provided as an illustration that there is a relevant right of privacy for anyone who believes that such a thing is either bogus or not a consequence of the 4th amendment.

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It falls short of suggesting that the 4th Amendment offers any general right of privacy.

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With regard to the type of 'case' required, I would compare the right to body integrity with things that might reasonably be considered more settled like the right to an abortion or the right to not have the government administer a truth serum before you take the witness stand.

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If you wish to claim that the 4th Amendment offers a general right to privacy that would be relevant to vaccination then I'd like you to offer cases that support such a claim. So far you haven't. Cases that don't involve the 4th Amendment (e.g. Roe versus Wade) or are clearly restricted to gathering evidence for trial ("the bullet case") don't pass muster for that purpose.

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With respect to the question of the bullets in an innocent person's wall, the court would NOT apply the 4th amendment to look at the whether such evidence could be admitted or whether a search could be performed. I thought that much was clear from the case. The opinion states that point explicitly and repeatedly.

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Which comes down to the question of whether it is "unreasonable" or not.

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On the other hand, anyone, defendant, witness, or bystander would have standing to challenge bullet removing surgery applied to his person.

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i.e. such searches are considered "unreasonable", where the search of the wall is not.

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You have raised the question of whether this particular case is sufficient for showing that the 4th amendment provides protection in situations where characterizing the situation is a search or seizure is a stretch.

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I'd say an "unreasonable" stretch. I'm quite happy to accept minor stretches. But really you raised the issue by claiming that the 4th Amendment offers a general protection against bodily intrusion even without the element of "search" or "seizure".

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That question is distinct from the question of whether I should have chosen a better case.

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The fact that the case you chose did not support your claims is very much relevant to the question of whether you could have chosen a better case.

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Are you still of the impression that the 4th amendment was not applied in Roe v. Wade?

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My understanding is that it was not settled on the 4th Amendment, but the 14th. Even the lower court used the 9th. That really seems sufficient to rule out the 4th Amendment as the primary law behind the ruling. If you wish to claim that 4th Amendment considerations were involved, in a way that supports your claims, then you are going to have to offer more than a vague claim that the 4th Amendment created the right to abortion.

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But the right to privacy is found in the places I suggest, the 1st, fourth, and fifth amendments, and for fundamental rights at least, filtered down to the states via the due process clause of the 14th amendment.

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As your quotes make clear even that - which is well short of your original claim - is far from agreed.With regard to Roe vs Wade the Supreme Court's characterisation of the case - as quoted by you - mentions the 4th Amendment only in the phrase "or in personal, marital, familial, and sexual privacy said to be protected by the Bill of Rights or its penumbras". Moreover, the Court went on to favour the alternative argument based on the 14th Amendment.

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Not being explicitly in the constitution does not make a right non-fundamental

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However it does mean that you need to make a case that there is a fundamental right that is sufficently breached by compulsory vaccination to require some form of heightened scrutiny.

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You've completely missed the point. The fourth amendment does not even apply in such a case. An innocent person has no standing to invoke the 4th amendment in a criminal where he is not the defendant

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You're thinking of the 5th Amendment. The 4th Amendment has no such restrictions on standing.

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You are correct, or at least more nearly correct than I am. In some circumstances the defendant can object to the state violating the 4th amendment rights of a third party

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More importantly a judge should bear the 4th Amendment in mind when issuing a warrant for a search - any search. Your assertion that the 4th Amendment does not apply is completely wrong. (And silly, since you want to exclude an obvious application of the 4th Amendment in that case to so that you can claim it was decided on a broader application. Arguing that it doesn't apply at all rules out ANY application).The simple fact is that anyone has standing if it's their rights being violated.If there's a grain of truth in your claim that only the defendant could have standing I expect it is when it comes to declaring evidence inadmissable. Only the defendant is harmed by the introduction of inadmissable evidence. THAT actually makes some sense.

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Your analysis is abbreviated to the point where it is inaccurate.

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Or accurate to the point where it disagrees with you.

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The right to privacy is described as depending on the first, fourth, and fifth amendments in very explicit terms in the quote I provided.

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That simply isn't true. The longer quote gives the impression that there are a number of derivations of a "right to privacy" and none specifically list only the "first, fourth and fifth" amendments.

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You are also failing to note that multiple cases are cited for the 4th amendment (Terry, Katz, Boyd, Ohlmsted)

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Not at all. I do however note that no case invokes the 4th Amendment alone, although there are cases described in the quote as deriving a right to privacy from each of the 1st, 9th and 14th Amendments alone.

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The fourth amendment is also invoked in the citation of Griswold. Griswold cites the 4th, 5th and 9th amendments as providing a right to marital privacy.

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Although the judges seem to view the 14th as the most important, even there. Griswold vs Connecticut

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The 14th amendment provides for due process, but it does not describe the rights which are protected by the due process

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Aren't you arguing that rights don't have to be mentioned in the Constitution ? (Which is true, but because of the 9th Amendment).

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The ninth amendment provides the citizens have rights that are not spelled out in the constitution but does nothing to spell out what those rights actually are.

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If it did, they would be spelled out in the Constitution. So obviously it doesn't - it would be self-defeating. The whole point is to allow for rights not spelled out in the Constitution - so if the 9th Amendment was limited to rights it spelled out, it would be useless.

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No, your characterization was factually inaccurate, and sloppy to the point where your errors were not just nits, they are a large part of your argument. For example, when you said that the fourth amendment was only mentioned once in connection with the penumbra of the bill of rights, that was completely wrong

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The fact that you have to resort to misrepresentation to identify "errors" only proves my point. That statement referred only to the short quote dealing with the characterisation of the case and it is completely true.As to the rest I will simply note that even if what you said is completely true (and quite frankly dealing with all your many misrepresentations has taken far too much time already) there is a long distance between resolving a case on the 14th Amendment and the penumbra if the 1st, 4th and 5th and resolving it on the 4th Amendment alone.

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n the case of the right to privacy, I'm saying that rights are suggested by the rights that are enumerated. If the court solely relies on the 9th and 14th, then they have to make up the rights from extra-constitutional sources.

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I.e I was correct to say that the rights are not directly granted by the other Amendments (even in combination) because if they were there would br no need to invoke the 9th, or to make the 14th the primary issue.

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That isn't just my claim. The judge writes in the opinion he is recognizing a privacy right that the witness cannot find under a conventional application of the fourth amendment.

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I would suggest that the issue in the case is primarily one of identifying which searches are to be considered unreasonable. That is an issue for case law.I cannot see anything suggesting otherwise and you have offered nothing either.