Federal Regulation of Quarantine

Authors

W. E. Walz, University of Maine School of Law

Abstract

During the recent excitement in the South caused by the sudden appearance of yellow fever and the consequent recrudescence of the shotgun quarantine an event has happened that might well attract the attention of every thoughtful citizen of the United States: the surrender of a very essential part of the police power of the State of Louisiana to the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service of the Federal Government. made on the plea of absolute necessity and on the principle that self-preservation is nature's first law. The Governor of the State assumed full responsibility for this surrender, and he had, and has, in this respect, the unanimous support of the leading men of his State, notably that of the well-known and deservedly popular Senator S. D. McEnery, of New Orleans. The Federal Government has thus far conservatively, successfully, and to the general satisfaction of the people of Louisiana, substantially exercised the same powers that it exercised with such universal approbation in Havana when it endeavored to eliminate the yellow fever from that city under the sovereign and unrestricted power then held by the United States in Cuba in all matters of civil and military jurisdiction. The action of the Governor of Louisiana has found, directly and indirectly, vigorous endorsement beyond the limits of the South, and one northern Congressman, Mr. Frederick Landis, af Indiana, claiming that nothing could be more purely national than a quarantine law, has recently declared that he wanted to do "whatever is necessary to get rid of mosquitoes and the constitutional lawyers."

Recommended Citation

W. E. Walz, Federal Regulation of Quarantine, 4 Mich. L. Rev. 189 (1906).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol4/iss3/1