Is it just to forcibly isolate an infected person when medical resources are deficient? The background is the outbreak of the coronavirus in China. Many infected people have been isolated to prevent the spread of the virus. However, medical resources are highly deficient in serious regions, leaving many patients untreated (or badly treated). Under this circumstance, is it just to isolate them?
Questions about whether a certain action is "just" tend to be maters of opinion, politics and philosophy, but it can be addressed from the perspective of legal theory (especially following the model of common law, where legal principles are based on concepts of just and proper action). Whether or not a certain action is actually legal in a certain jurisdiction depends on the laws of that country -- I suspect that the answer is different for the US versus China. The first question would be whether those government officials have the legal authority – I assume they do. Such authority is generally governed by some specific circumstances, for example, "poses an imminent and grave threat to public health". It is basically not a legal question whether quarantining in the face of this viral threat is necessary from a public health perspective, that is a medical question. What the law would say is that if this is a serious threat, then a person's liberty can be curtailed to a limited extent, because a person does not have the right to harm others because they don't want to do some thing that protects the rights of others (be vaccinated, stay in quarantine until it is safe). However, principles of legal justice also say that the government's response should be proportionate, e.g. shoot-on-sight in response to a sneeze is not proportionate. Quarantining has long been recognized as a valid, just and legal response to such extreme medical threats. Historically speaking, quarantining used to be the only effective action that a government can take against e.g. smallpox, plague, Spanish flu, Ebola.
This is a deescalation tactic. By giving some ridiculous far out reason, the officer hopes to distract you from any combative or aggressive feelings you have about being stopped. You can do this too, if someone you think is getting progressively angrier might try and hurt you, bringing up something random forces their mind off their anger, even just for a moment. And sometimes, that's enough to avoid a conflict. As for the legality of telling you the reason, no they are not required to tell you the reason, as has been mentioned several times on stack exchange. If an officer says to himself, "I think this guy has crack on him because of X," and it's captured on his body cam, then he's covered. He can prove to the court that he did have reasonable suspicion to detain you, even if he later tells you, "I have a report of zombies in the area and I need to see your ID to determine if you have a death certificate."
You missed a bit: Unless, of course, the patient was a private patient and the doctor accepted half a guinea for his trouble: As well as the state-run National Health Service (which is generally free to most patients) the UK also has a number of private health care providers where patients pay, for example, to be treated sooner than they would if they went with the NHS. Some NHS doctors also work on a self-employed basis in this private sector, called private practice, which creates the contractual relationship alluded to by Lord Devlin. Re: Don't NHS doctors receive consideration, even if patients don't pay? Yes they do. But not from a (non-private) patient - they are paid by the NHS (or related entity). There are different contractual relationships available, such as being on a salaried payscale or in a partnership but all remuneration comes from the NHS.
As a result, Bob becomes ill and dies. Could Eve be tried for Murder, Manslaughter, or some other crime, as she chose not to be vaccinated against a disease that she (in-directly) passed on to Bob and killed him? There are basically two distinct issues here. What is the duty? And if a duty was breached, what intent is necessary to breach it? There is not a legal duty to be vaccinated. There is a duty to use reasonable care not to hurt others. The duty not to hurt others could be satisfied by not seeing Bob in person, by wearing a mask around Bob or by having other non-transmission means available, in addition to being vaccinated. But Eve didn't do any of these things. We don't know if Eve had any reason to think that she presented a risk of infection to Bob because she could have passed the virus to him while she was asymptomatic. We also know, by the assumption of the question, that Eve was the source of the infection. But, in real life, proving the source of an infection beyond a reasonable doubt is very challenging or impossible. This must be established for any homicide crime. There is no indication that Eve knew she was transmitting the virus to Bob, or that Eve intended to transmit the virus to Bob (if she intentionally spat in Bob's face intending to infect him that would be a different matter). At most, her conduct was reckless, but if she was asymptotic and has no idea that she was doing something that was actually putting Bob at risk, her intent could be as slight as negligent (for tort law purposes only) or criminally grossly negligent. Since she lacked the necessary intent to commit murder (i.e. either an intention to kill, or an intention to inflict grievous bodily harm), she could not be guilty of the offense of murder. There are three types of voluntary manslaughter in England, none of which apply here: &quot;There are three types of voluntary manslaughter: that resulting from loss of self-control; that resulting from statutorily defined diminished responsibility; and killing in perseverance of a suicide pact.&quot; So, this leaves involuntary manslaughter as the most serious possible homicide offense. Involuntary manslaughter could encompass either reckless conduct (i.e. &quot;the unlawful act must be such that all sober and reasonable people would inevitably recognise it as an act which must subject the other person to at least the risk of some harm resulting therefrom albeit not serious harm&quot;) and is usually in furtherance of some other criminal offense, or in the case of &quot;gross negligence manslaughter&quot;, negligent conduct that is a far greater level of wrongdoing than the negligence that would suffice for civil tort liability. Gross negligence manslaughter is the most plausible charge and is itself a hard call that involves judgement and discretion on the part of the trier of fact (i.e. the judge in a bench trial, and the jury in a jury trial) that is exercised on a case by case basis considering all of the circumstances. Also, to be clear, the wrongful act in a gross negligence involuntary manslaughter case would be transmitting the virus (which could have been prevented multiple ways) and not failing to get vaccinated itself.
I guess it depends on what courts decide is the &quot;standard of care&quot; in prisons against transmissible diseases. This has been litigated in various way recently, not just following deaths: From a legal standpoint, many the cases center upon: due process claims under the Fourteenth Amendment, particularly related to pre-trial detainees; Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment; Americans with Disabilities Act violations; and discrimination claims under the Rehabilitation Act. Plaintiffs are often asking judges to intervene to force immediate changes at prisons and jails, while litigation is pending. The approach has yielded mixed results thus far. Some judges have moved aggressively, ordering institutions to improve conditions and to do more to adhere to CDC guides. Yet those decisions have met with continued appeals and resistance from corrections officials, and the U.S. Supreme Court has twice overturned efforts by federal judges to intervene forcefully in coronavirus-related matters. In May, the high court rejected on procedural grounds a request by inmates to increase cleaning and COVID-19-related education efforts at their Texas-based geriatric correctional facility. The court upheld the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which had overturned a Houston-based federal judge’s ruling supporting the prisoners. A few days later, however, the court appeared to switched course, letting stand a federal judge’s order requiring that prison officials move hundreds of inmates from an Ohio institution where nine people had died from COVID-19. Then, on Aug. 3, justices, in a 5-4 decision, overturned a lower-court injunction requiring stricter health and safety measures at the jail in Orange County in Southern California. The Orange County case, Barnes v. Ahlman, is instructive in terms of the arguments being made on both sides and the response by the courts. The jail’s leadership was accused by prisoners of ignoring Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations by failing to enforce social distancing measures and declining to isolate inmates with COVID-19 symptoms. A federal judge in California had issued a preliminary injunction that required the jail to take stronger measures, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit declined a request by the jail to halt the injunction. Jail officials argued that, prior to the injunction, CDC guidelines had been “largely implemented” and said the injunction’s requirements far exceeded the scope of the CDC’s recommendations. They also cited their efforts to voluntarily release half of the jail’s inmates to help with social distancing and said they had all but eliminated “COVID within the jail population.” The Supreme Court majority voted to stay the injunction while litigation continues. As is custom, the justices did not explain their reasoning in the order. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, saying the stay was premature and that jail had placed inmates at significant risk. Earlier in the Texas case, Sotomayor encouraged lower courts to ensure “that prisons are not deliberately indifferent in the face of danger and death.” I guess some Supreme Justices might not say it but probably think it that it's not cruel and unusual to (catch and) die of transmissible diseases in prison since it happens all the time. E.g. according to one study 97% of infected inmates don't get Hep C treatment. At the other end of the spectrum: a former jail administrator in Oklahoma was sentenced to more than 4 years in prison following his decision not to take an inmate with diabetes to hospital, resulting in his death in 2013. The administrator &quot;pleaded guilty to one count of deprivation of rights under color of law.&quot; The inmate in question died of ketoacidosis. So the standard of care in prisons is somewhere in between these extremes. Most litigation regarding Covid-19 seems to center on whether CDC guidelines have been followed or not. I see that the CDC does have some specific guidelines for correctional facilities in this regard. I'm not sure of negligence case law in prison, but regarding the 8th Amendment violations, Helling v. McKinney is probably relevant to preventative measures: In Helling v. McKinney, the Court considered the case of a Nevada prisoner, &quot;the cellmate of a five-pack-a-day smoker,&quot; who sought to be housed in an environment free of second-hand smoke. McKinney suffered from no ailment and sought no medical treatment. Justice Byron White wrote for a 7-2 majority of the Court that McKinney's claim that prison officials &quot;have, with deliberate indifference, exposed him to levels of ETS [second hand smoke] that pose an unreasonable risk of serious damage to his future health&quot; raised a valid claim under the Eighth Amendment. He wrote that McKinney would have to prove both the scientific facts of the dangers of exposure to second-hand smoke and prove that community standards supported him, that &quot;it violates contemporary standards of decency to expose anyone unwillingly to such a risk. In other words, the prisoner must show that the risk of which he complains is not one that today's society chooses to tolerate.&quot; He would also have to prove that prison officials acted with deliberate indifference. Also following Ashcroft v. Iqbal government officials could not be held liable for the unconstitutional conduct of their subordinates so each official would have to be proved liable individually for involvement in such a (faulty) decision.
There are circumstances in which medical ethics historically authorized treating physicians to defer sharing information with patients or even to mislead them in their best interests medically, although the scope of what is considered ethical in that regard is narrowing. But in the fact pattern described in the quoted material there is no plausible way that this withholding of information could be justified. If it was intentional (or for that matter, even if it was negligent) there could be grounds for tort liability for harm caused as a result (although causation and damages are hard to prove). On the other hand, just because it could give rise to tort liability, doesn't imply that the action is necessarily a crime, at least without some kind of motive other than random spite to intentionally provide a false result. However, it is quite difficult to come up with a believable reason that this would happen to someone at random. If the person taking the test bribed someone to provide a false result, which is plausible, that is one thing, but just doing it randomly really doesn't make any sense. The fact pattern provided sounds like it doesn't include the &quot;full story.&quot; Why keep records of the actual test results (or for that matter why do the actual tests at all) if you are merely going to intentionally provide a false negative?
Yes. Although there are numerous child-protection laws, there is nothing specific for (beggar) children in this scenario so it would fall within Criminal Force, an offence contrary to section 350 Indian Penal Code: Whoever intentionally uses force to any person, without that person's consent ... or intending ... or knowing it to be likely that by the use of such force he will cause injury, fear or annoyance to the person to whom the force is used, is said to use criminal force to that other. The punishment for which may be found at section 352 Whoever ... uses criminal force to any person otherwise than on grave and sudden provocation given by that person, shall be punished with imprisonment ... for a term which may extend to three months, or with fine which may extend to five hundred rupees, or with both. For completeness &quot;Force&quot; is described by section 349 as: A person is said to use force to another if he causes motion, change of motion, or cessation of motion to that other, or if he causes to any substance such motion, or change of motion, or cessation of motion as brings that substance into contact with any part of that other's body, or with anything which that other is wearing or carrying, or with anything so situated that such contact affects that other's sense of feeling... [A substance could be, for example, a broom handle or a pan of water] Also, for completeness there's the alternative of Assault under section 351 if no force is used.
Are UK Tier 4 rules law? Yes. The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) (England) Regulations 2020 (SI 2020/1374) has been amended by SI 2020/1611. Unfortunately, the amendment is only available as pdf at the moment and I can't copy-and-paste it on my phone for you. SI 2020/1374 and all subsequent amendments may be found here... https://www.legislation.gov.uk/primary+secondary?title=Coronavirus%20all%20tiers ETA: The Introductory Text to SI 2020/1374 states: The Secretary of State makes the following Regulations in exercise of the powers conferred by sections 45C(1), (3)(c), (4)(b), (4)(d), 45F(2) and 45P of the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1984/22/contents