Does the U.S. Constitution guarantee a right to a vaccine passport? In the United States and elsewhere, vaccine passports have existed for over a century, but have recently become politically divisive as applied to COVID-19. A consensus has emerged among legal experts that vaccine passports are often constitutionally permissible. Yet there has been almost no serious analysis about whether a vaccine passport can be a constitutional right: whether a government is constitutionally obligated to exempt fully vaccinated people from many liberty-restricting measures. While some measures may be unconstitutional regardless of to whom they apply, we argue that there exist certain public-health restrictions from which the vaccinated must constitutionally be exempted, even if the unvaccinated need not be. The government is never constitutionally obligated to impose liberty-restricting measures in response to an epidemic. But where it does so, it often has an obligation to exempt those who, being successfully vaccinated, pose little danger of transmitting the disease or suffering serious illness. Under U.S. constitutional law, vaccinated people might be entitled to exemptions from six sets of restrictions: (1) domestic travel and movement; (2) international travel; (3) uncompensated shutdowns, under the Fifth Amendment takings clause; (4) abortion, under the constitutional right to privacy; (5) restrictions on access to gun stores, under the Second Amendment; and (6) assembly and worship, under the First Amendment freedom of assembly and free exercise clauses. Contrary to some social-justice and liberty-based arguments, this conclusion is also consistent with longstanding liberal principles of fair allocation of costs, equity, liberty, and non-discrimination.
For the over half-million people currently homeless in the United States, the U.S. Constitution has historically provided little help: it is strongly...
Who has the legal right to challenge decisions by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration? And should the moral umbrage of a group of anti-abortion...
President Joe Biden promised during his State of the Union address on March 7, 2024, that he would make the right to get an abortion a federal law.
“If...
Gradualism should have won out in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, exerting gravitational influence on the majority and dissenters alike. In general...
En række amerikanske præsidentkandidater og kongresmedlemmer er i de sidste år begyndt at argumentere for, at USA burde lancere militære angreb mod...
Today, legal culture is shaped by One Big Question: should courts, particularly the US Supreme Court, have a lot of power? This question is affecting...
There is concern that present-biased agents incur too much debt because of its deferred costs – concern that has influenced regulation of consumer...
Lenders are perfectly free to decide for themselves whether, when, how, to whom and on what terms they will extend credit to a sovereign borrower. But...
False information causes harm, threatening individuals, groups, and society. Many people struggle to judge the veracity of the information around them...
Constitutional review is the power of a body, usually a court, to assess whether law or government action complies with the constitution. Originating...
This article examines the impact of Greece retroactively, via legislation, changing the terms in hundreds of billions of euros worth of Greek...
The Supreme Court’s recent expansion of the major questions doctrine has rocked administrative law, throwing into doubt executive agencies’ statutory...
Income inequality is a national preoccupation, and the public’s imagination is captured by the astronomical incomes of Valley tech billionaires and...
There is a live debate going on over whether antitrust should take a broader view of the economics of market concentration. When antitrust reformers...
Hot Flash: How Understanding Menopause Can Improve Life and Law for Everyone dissolves the silence and stigma surrounding menopause. The book frames...
During times of crisis, governments often consider policies that may promote safety, but that would require overstepping constitutionally protected...