The Original Anti-Vaxxer

More Perfect

WNYC Studios

Wnyc, Scotus, Perfect, History, Court, More, Documentary, Courses, Supreme, Education, Society & Culture

4.8 • 14.7K Ratings

🗓️ 27 July 2023

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1902, a Swedish-American pastor named Henning Jacobson refused to get the smallpox vaccine. This launched a chain of events leading to two landmark Supreme Court cases, in which the Court considered the balancing act between individual liberty over our bodies and the collective good.

A version of this story originally ran on The Experiment on March 21, 2021.

Voices in the episode include:

• Rev. Robin Lutjohann — pastor of Faith Lutheran Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts

• Michael Willrich — Brandeis University history professor

• Wendy Parmet — Northeastern University School of Law professor

Learn more:

• 1905: Jacobson v. Massachusetts

• 1927: Buck v. Bell

• 2022: National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration

• 2022: Biden v. Missouri

• "Pox: An American History" by Michael Willrich

• "Constitutional Contagion: COVID, the Courts, and Public Health" by Wendy Parmet

Music by Ob (“Wold”), Parish Council (“Leaving the TV on at Night,” “Museum Weather,” “P Lachaise”), Alecs Pierce (“Harbour Music, Parts I & II”), Laundry (“Lawn Feeling”), water feature (“richard iii (duke of gloucester)”), Keyboard (“Mu”), and naran ratan (“Forevertime Journeys”), provided by Tasty Morsels. Additional music by Dieterich Buxtehude (“Prelude and Fugue in D Major”), Johannes Brahms (“Quintet for Clarinet, Two Violins, Viola, and Cello in B Minor”), and Andrew Eric Halford and Aidan Mark Laverty (“Edge of a Dream”).

Shadow dockets, term limits, amicus briefs — what puzzles you about the Supreme Court? What stories are you curious about? We want to answer your questions in our next season. Click here to leave us a voice memo.

Supreme Court archival audio comes from Oyez®, a free law project by Justia and the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.

Support for More Perfect is provided in part by The Smart Family Fund.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, Julian. My name is Yasha. I'm from Amsterdam in the Netherlands. I wondered if the Supreme Court has ever ruled on the balance between personal liberty on the one hand and public health on the other.
0:24.0	Can the government limit the freedom of individuals in order to protect the health of everybody else?
0:34.0	I'm Julia Lengoria. This is more perfect.
0:39.0	It feels like every day I get a reminder of how much the COVID pandemic has completely changed our world.
0:48.0	About 7 million people have died of COVID. Vaccination is now a topic on the campaign trail.
0:57.0	So I've been thinking a lot about this question a listener posed to us. About the balance between our individual freedoms and our health.
1:07.0	It's a difficult question and one that really interests me personally because I strongly believe in both.
1:13.0	I believe in personal freedom and liberty and the right to make your own choices in life. That's like a core value to me.
1:22.0	But so is health and safety of everybody around me.
1:26.0	I would really like to know whether the Supreme Court has ever ruled on this and whether they've been able to find the balance between these two rights and if so, how and where.
1:37.0	In the last few years, the Supreme Court has had to balance these two interests, most often ruling against public health.
1:48.0	They rejected vaccine and mass mandates and social distancing requirements. But that hasn't always been the case.
1:56.0	We looked further back in history to one of the first times the court ever weighed these two interests.
2:02.0	In a case that became a basis for our country's public health system. This week, the story of that case.
2:12.0	Hello, this is Robin.
2:15.0	Hi, is this the Swedish Lutheran church in Cambridge?
2:21.0	We haven't been that in a very long time, but yes, this is I'm the pastor of faith Lutheran church. How can I help you?
2:30.0	Oh, okay. Thank you. I'm working on a story about pastor Henning Jacobson.
2:38.0	Yep, I'm sure this is about vaccination.
2:41.0	Yes, but producer Gabrielle Burbe cold called a church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This was actually a couple of years ago when Gabrielle and I were working on another WNYC studio show called the experiment, a co-production with the Atlantic magazine.
2:58.0	Gabrielle was searching for the very first vaccine case to come before the Supreme Court.
3:05.0	It all began in this church over 100 years ago.
	...

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