Disease Detention and Habeas Corpus

From Federalist 84:
Section 9, Article 1, Clause 2 states: "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it."
...
"The observations of the judicious Blackstone, in reference to the latter, are well worthy of recital: 'To bereave a man of life, [says he] or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government.' And as a remedy for this fatal evil he is everywhere peculiarly emphatical in his encomiums on the habeas corpus act, which in one place he calls 'the BULWARK of the British Constitution.'"
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This situation is certainly a violation of Daniels' constitutional right to habeas corpus. However, the Constitution allows for the suspension of habeas corpus in cases of invasion when the public safety requires it. A drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis can be considered invasion, and in this sense, Daniels' detention might be valid and constitutional, especially since there is such a threat to public safety.

If vaccinations are required for all school-going children, what can we do with such a highly infectious disease that has no cure or method of prevention? The only choice at the time, to prevent an epidemic, would be to keep patients with this strain of TB in detention. Ultimately, the lives of thousands of people, if not many more, are at stake.

This detention can also be justified because Daniels broke the requirements he had as a TB patient. "County health authorities obtained a court order to lock him up as a danger to the public because he failed to take precautions to avoid infecting others. Specifically, he said he did not heed doctors' instructions to wear a mask in public." Because there was a method of preventing the <em>spread</em> of this particular strain amongst others, and Daniels did not uphold these measures. In that case, he did lose his habeas corpus unconstitutionally because he was not given a trial for breaking the restrictions that were put in place for public safety before he was actually put into detention.

Also, if we consider that his violation of habeas corpus is constitutional (as first stated), then we cannot reconcile this disease threat to society with the fact that we give habeas corpus to mass murderers. If murderers and terrorists have been given habeas corpus, even after killing so many people, there is no reason that Daniels should have been denied habeas corpus when he only put people at risk! And to think that he might be detained "indefinitely," if not for the rest of his life-->essentially a life sentence, an equivalent to actually murdering or raping someone.

Going back to Blackstone's commentary on habeas corpus, what is the most disturbing part of this article is the hint that these types of detentions could become much more common. If that is the case, how many people can we or will we detain? Daniels does not have access to a "shower...television, radio, personal phone and computer"? How many people will be denied the right to association, communication, life, and fundamental liberties? Our Constitution states explicitly that the right to life, liberty, or property can never denied without due process. Without habeas corpus, there is no due process, and disease detentions, at the worst, almost signal to a beginning to more policies that may be more dangerous than we realize.