Today in Supreme Court History: February 20, 1933

2/20/1933: The 21st Amendment is submitted to the states.

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

And now, for actual Supreme Court history:

February 20, 1905: The Court upholds government-mandated universal vaccinations. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 1905.

[Michael D]

Not really. In Jacobson v Massachusetts, the US Supreme Court upheld the Cambridge, Mass, Board of Health’s authority to require vaccination against smallpox during a smallpox epidemic. Not an act by presidential executive authority.

The Court nonetheless concluded with a note of caution:

“The police power of a State, whether exercised by the legislature, or by a local body acting under its authority, may be exerted in such circumstances or by regulations so arbitrary and oppressive in particular cases as to justify the interference of the courts to prevent wrong and oppression.”

Equally as important, Jacobson was cited in Buck v Bell, 274 US 200 (1927) as support for the general principle that public welfare was sufficient to justify involuntary sterilization. The decision extended the police power’s reach from imposing a monetary penalty for refusing vaccination to forcing surgery on a young woman against her will and depriving her of the ability to have children. The Court did not require the state to demonstrate that sterilization was necessary and not arbitrary or oppressive. This suggests that the Court did not view Jacobson as having required any substantive standard of necessity or reasonableness that would prevent what today would be considered an indefensible assault. With the Court’s imprimatur of involuntary sterilization laws, more than 60 000 Americans, mostly poor women, were sterilized by 1978.

[Dilan Esper]

Buck is a bad decision. Jacobson is a good one. That sometimes happens in the law.

(And all the stuff right wingers say to try and limit the holding of Jacobson have zero to do with the law. It's a very broad decision.)

[Michael D]

The “wingers”? LOL.

The Supreme Court had no difficulty upholding the state’s power to grant the board of health authority to order a general vaccination program during an epidemic. No one disputed, and the Constitution confirmed, that states retained all the sovereign authority they had not ceded to the national government in the Constitution. There had never been any doubt that, subject to constitutional limitations, states had authority to legislate with respect to all matters within their geographic boundaries, or to police their internal affairs, which Chief Justice Marshall referred to as the “police power.”

Jacobson was the rare case in which a state’s jurisdiction was not questioned—because no one claimed that the federal government should control a local smallpox epidemic. Instead, the question was whether the state had overstepped its own authority and whether the sphere of personal liberty protected by the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.

The decision held that a state may require healthy adults to accept an effective vaccination when an existing epidemic endangers a community’s population.

Read that again…a state, not executive action.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

You seem to be arguing against a point no one here is making.

[John F. Carr]

If you're teaching important constitutional law moments, Jacobson is less important than the 21st Amendment. If Jacobson goes the other way America isn't much different. Vaccines are quite popular, and until recently most people who couldn't or wouldn't take vaccines would not have their lives seriously affected. If Prohibition remains America is much different.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

That may be true, but ostensibly these are supposed to be about the history of the Supreme Court.

[John F. Carr]

That's a good point. Ostensibly it's about the Supreme Court, not constitutional law in general. I still think the 21st Amendment wins but it's a much closer call.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Ha ha. You didn't really think he was going to bring that up.

[Dan Schiavetta]

He rarely talks about the cases he mentions, or their importance, so I wouldn't have been surprised if he had.

[jdgalt1]

I'm surprised Josh doesn't mention that the 21st was submitted to be ratified by state ratifying conventions -- the only time Congress has used that method since the Constitution itself. (FDR did not think the sitting state legislatures at the time would ratify it.)

[F.D. Wolf]

Supporters of the amendment felt that popularly elected slates of delegates would be more likely to ratify it than rural-dominated state legislatures.

[Cal Cetín]

I wonder why this method hasn't been tried since.

The "state conventions" are like Presidential electors, ratifying the decision of the voters of a state.

Get voters in 38 states to agree with an amendment, have rubber-stamp conventions to make the voters' choices official, and bingo.

Could it be that if we had more examples of amendments getting ratified by this means, people would start to think the amendment process wasn't as outdated as we've been led to believe?

[Michael D]

Free beer, tomorrow

[Kevin Smith]

Free beer, topless bartenders, and false advertising, inside.