Asking the Right Questions: Body Scanners, is Salus Populi Supreme Lex the Answer?
18 Pages Posted: 4 Aug 2013
Date Written: August 2, 2013
Abstract
In Asking the Right Questions: Body Scanners, is Salus Populi Supreme Lex the Answer?, Professor Victoria Sutton focuses on the Transportation Security Administration’s body scanner policy and the legal questions the policy raises, specifically whether salus populi suprema lex – "the individual right sinks in the necessity to provide for the public good" – is a reasonable rationalization for the burden on individual rights caused by the policy. Part I reviews the challenges to the policy that have been initiated by airline pilots and passengers in the past. Part II poses questions that should be asked; this section addresses competing interests, Fourth Amendment issues, a constitutional right to travel, ultra vires challenges, Fifth Amendment and procedural due process, privacy right differences for civilians and military officers, and lastly, the public health perspective on body scanners and a proposal for using the emergency public health declaration. Part IV analogizes the example of the childhood vaccinations requirement to the body scanner policy.
Keywords: body scanners, Transportation Security Administration, salus populi supreme lex, September 11, airport scanning device. airport security, pat-down, TSA, backscatter technology, millimeter wave technology
JEL Classification: K19, K39, K49
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation