Among many, the fear of COVID-19 is great and the solution – universal vaccinations to achieve herd immunity – is incontestable. Some are calling for vaccination IDs, and even mandatory vaccinations.

Would that be constitutional?
In 1901, a smallpox epidemic prompted the Boston and Cambridge boards of health to order vaccinations of all its residents.

One of them, a Swedish-born pastor named Henning Jacobson, refused and was fined. He then took his case all the way to the US Supreme Court.

I wondered: How did the nation’s top justices rule? This is what I found.