Contagious disease and self-defence

Res Publica

Volumn 13, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 339-359

  Wilkinson, T M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND   (New Zealand)

Author keywords

Compulsion; Contagious disease; Public health ethics; Quarantine; Self defence

Indexed keywords

EID: 36649031250     PISSN: 13564765     EISSN: 15728692     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s11158-007-9024-0     Document Type: Article

References (46)

1. Howard Markel, When Germs Travel (New York: Pantheon Books, 2004), p. 44.
2. For the opposing sides in the controversy, see the exchange between two leading writers in the field: Lawrence O. Gostin, 'When Terrorism Threatens Health: How Far are Limitations on Personal and Economic Liberties Justified?', Florida Law Review 55/5 (2003) 1105-70, and the commentary in the same issue by George Annas, 'Puppy Love: Bioterrorism, Civil Rights, and Public Health', 1171-90.
3. See also Gostin's book-length discussion, Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000)
4. and Gostin, 'The Future of Communicable Disease Control: Toward a New Concept in Public Health Law', The Milbank Quarterly 83/4 (2005) 1-17.
5. Although self-defence has been discussed in medical ethics as a potential justification of abortion. See e.g. Nancy Davis, 'Abortion and Self-Defense', Philosophy and Public Affairs 13/3 (1984) 175-207;
6. F.M. Kamm, Creation and Abortion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 42-56.
7. Other rights might also be relevant. Some believe that a right to religious freedom supports a right not to be vaccinated, although this is controversial. See Brown v. Stone 378 SO 2d 218 (1979), where the Supreme Court of Mississippi refused a religious exemption to vaccination as a condition of a child's entry to school. 48 US states do permit religious exemptions, and a few permit exemptions on the basis of 'philosophical' objections.
8. See Lawrence O. Gostin (ed), Public Health Law and Ethics: A Reader (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), pp. 387-94.
9. Judith Jarvis Thomson, The Realm of Rights (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 135.
10. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960);
11. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974).
12. Others include a means-end constraint and fairness. See Gostin, Public Health Law, ch. 4.
13. See also J. Childress and R. Bernheim, 'Beyond the Liberal and Communitarian Impasse: A Framework and Vision for Public Health', Florida Law Review 55/5 (2003), 1191-219, pp. 1202-6.
14. Gostin, op. cit., p. 103.
15. Ibid., p. 215.
16. A. Ripstein, Equality, Responsibility, and the Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 195.
17. Whitley Kaufman, 'Is There a 'Right' to Self-Defense?', Criminal Justice Ethics 23/1 (2004) 20-32, p. 27.
18. The judgement is excerpted in Gostin, Public Health Law, pp. 206-15.
19. Ibid., p. 209.
20. Jacobson in Buck v. Bell 247 US 200 (1927).
21. A. Buchanan, D. Brock, N. Daniels and D. Wikler, From Chance to Choice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), ch. 2.
22. Ibid., p. 52.
23. Judith Jarvis Thomson, 'Self-Defense', Philosophy and Public Affairs 20/4 (1991), 283-310, pp. 298-9.
24. For a representative version see Gostin, 'When Terrorism Threatens Health', section 3. The writers usually cited as giving the paradigmatic harm to others argument are John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982)
25. and Joel Feinberg, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law 4 vols. esp. vol 1, Harm to Others (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984).
26. Feinberg, op. cit.
27. Thus the negligent, who like the intentional and reckless are at fault, are legitimate targets for self-defence. This is an ethical claim, and not a legal claim about self-defence in criminal and tort law (which anyway varies among jurisdictions). My thanks to a referee for insisting on clarity here.
28. Nozick, op. cit., p. 34.
29. Thomson, Realm of Rights, p. 336f.;
30. 'Self-Defense', pp. 300-3.
31. Jeff McMahan, The Ethics of Killing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 398f.
32. Allen Buchanan and Dan Brock, Deciding for Others (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), ch, 4.
33. See Jason Eberhart-Phillips, Plagues on Our Doorstep (Auckland: Tandem Press, 1999), ch. 10 'Breakdown of the public health infrastructure'.
34. Ronald Bayer and Amy L. Fairchild, 'The Genesis of Public Health Ethics' Bioethics 18/6 (2004), 473-92, p. 489.
35. Gerald N. Grob The Deadly Truth (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 189.
36. Warren Quinn, Morality and Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 175 n. 3.
37. Jonathan Bennett, 'Morality and Consequences' in S. McMurrin (ed.), The Tanner Lectures on Human Values 2 (1981);
38. Thomson, 'Self-Defense', section V.
39. Quinn, op. cit., ch. 8.
40. Bennett, op. cit., p. 111;
41. McMahan, op. cit., p. 410.
42. Ripstein, op. cit., pp. 190-201.
43. Adrian Zuckerman, The Principles of Criminal Evidence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 137-9.
44. See Gostin, Public Health Law, p. 211.
45. Ibid., p. 200.
46. Without wishing to commit myself to any significant legal claims, this idea might be the basis for the necessity defence to otherwise unlawful acts and so, just as there is a self-defence justification for some public health compulsion, there might be a necessity justification too.