Outline

I'm looking at quarantine laws between roughly 1870 and 1920, to see how the States and federal government worked together. There's a few reasons I chose this era: it spans a few epidemics (principally yellow fever), and the unsuccessful creation of a federal body (the National Board of Health) to regulate quarantine uniformly in cases where States failed. But in the end (around 1883, an unconfirmed source reports: link) the Board failed. I'm curious why it failed.

My time frame ends with the creation of the first successful federal quarantine laws. Also, the Australian constitution was drafted in that time (coming into effect in 1901). While the Australian drafters copied whole slabs of the US Constitution (sometimes without thinking it through very carefully) one of the specific heads of power they gave to the Australian federal government that is not present in the US Constitution was the power to regulate quarantine. I was curious to see if there was any connection to what had happened in the US and what the Australian drafters did.

So I went and consulted Quick and Garran, which is a commentary on the Australian Constitution written in 1901 containing background of the convention debates section by section. I found and scanned the relevant pages in the Butler library, and then realized it was on Google books. So I've attached both links. (the second is in the table below)

The answer in brief to my first question appears to be no, the Australian drafters looked more to the example of Canada rather than the US when considering quarantine powers. But they did look at some US caselaw, which I'll be looking at next.

Parallel to this research, I've made a trip out to the very helpful Columbia medical campus research library, to get a contextual look at what people thought about appropriate quarantine measures at the time. The friendly research librarians showed me a book on the Early History of Quarantine by the Assistant Surgeon General John Macauley Eager. (Again, after looking at the hardcopy, it's on Google books so I've attached that link.) The book as a whole is very interesting, but sadly not quite what I was looking for (I was hoping for some kind of primary source hook). In fact, the author states on page 26 'Without touching on the history of quarantine in America, which is another and interesting story, it is profitable to take another view of the further history of quarantine in Europe.' So I'm still looking for some secondary source segues into the extensive (and electronic) primary source records in Butler, but won't delay too much longer looking for one.

_Louisiana v Texas_ 176 US 1 (1900) held that there was no interstate federal jurisdiction merely because the quarantine actions of one state (Texas) hurt those of another (Louisiana). The facts of the case concerned the Texan embargo on interstate trade during the yellow fever outbreak in 1899. The Supreme Court point-blank refused to get involved.

Important Acts:

1) "An act to prevent the introduction of infectious or contagious diseases into the United States, and to establish a national board of health" 45th Congress, Session III, 1879 20 Stat 484. 2) "An act granting additional quarantine powers and imposing additional duties upon the Marine Hospital Service" 27 Stat 449 Ch 114, 52nd Congress, approved February 15 1893. Section 9 of this Act repeals the 1879 act above.

-- EmilyByrne - 13 Nov 2009

Help Request: does anyone know a good way to find early acts of Congress? I have them in hardcopy, and am trying to find them in a public source electronic form.

Update: Acts uploaded from hardcopy, thanks to the Law Library's shiny new scanner.

Progress note: I have a big paper due on Jan 11th, so will be only around sporadically before then, but will be working intensively thereafter.

-- EmilyByrne - 4 Jan 2010

Hi Emily! I tried to add a comment in the 'comment' box but it didn't show up anywhere on the page afterwards, so I've resorted to just editing your page directly - I hope that's okay. Anyway, I'm not sure whether this is the type of thing you're looking for with regard to early acts of Congress, but it might be useful as a primary source database in any case:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/

Good luck!

Angela Chen

Hey Emily, here's a link to an article (sorry not a primary source) on race, immigration, disease and law at turn-of-century. at least points to some potentially useful federal case law and hopefully other useful directions -- Andrew http://www.jstor.org/stable/828412?seq=1

-- AndrewKerr - 05 Dec 2009

Thanks Angela! That's very close to what I was looking for, only just for a slightly later date range to cover the 1890s. But I think your link will be very helpful regardless. And thanks Andrew! I hadn't even begun to think about the role race and immigration concerns would play into this, except at a really general level. And the article is really interesting. Emily

-- EmilyByrne - 14 Dec 2009

• Quick_and_Garran.pdf: Quick, John & Garran, Robert (1901) The Annotated Constitution of the Australian Commonwealth Sydney: Angus & Robertson.

• The_early_history_of_quarantine.pdf: The_early_history_of_quarantine.pdf Eager, John M (1903) The Early History of Quarantine Washington: Government Printer.