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Under that reasoning, it's difficult to imagine a power the CDC wouldn't be able to justify exerting under the guise of public health. See how the ICC has been

• betterunix2 5y ago
  Like I said, the question that needs to be answered is how long can an emergency power be exercised before Congress or the courts step in. In the early days of the country we had plenty of exercises of emergency powers. It was common for large numbers of buildings to be demolished in an attempt to prevent fires from spreading across cities, and nobody waited for a judge to rule on the acceptability and compensation requirements of such actions. There was never any doubt that if a foreign army was invading the President could immediately order the US army and state militias to respond, without waiting for Congress to vote on a declaration of war. It is also worth remembering that when the constitution was drafted the prevailing theory of disease was the "miasma theory," and only a rudimentary understanding of disease containment that included some vague concepts of quarantine. Disease outbreaks would routinely create ghost towns all over the country. I have no doubt that the framers of constitution, had they understood disease as we understand it today, would have had no problem whatsoever with the CDC's emergency powers and would have focused on how Congress could regulate those emergency actions (as they did with the military).