Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/152/133/
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 14:28:43+00:00

Document:
The extent and limits of what is known as the "police power" have been a fruitful subject of discussion in the appellate courts of nearly every state in the Union. It is universally conceded to include everything essential to the public safety, health, and morals, and to justify the destruction or abatement, by summary proceedings, of whatever may be regarded as a public nuisance. Under this power, it has been held that the state may order the destruction of a house falling to decay or otherwise endangering the lives of passers-by; the demolition of such as are in the path of a conflagration; the slaughter of diseased cattle; the destruction of decayed or unwholesome food; the prohibition of wooden buildings in cities; the regulation of railways and other means of public conveyance, and of interments in burial grounds; the restriction of objectionable trades to certain localities; the compulsory vaccination of children; the confinement of the insane or those afflicted with contagious diseases; the restraint of vagrants, beggars, and habitual drunkards; the suppression of obscene publications and houses of ill fame, and the prohibition of gambling houses and places where intoxicating liquors are sold. Beyond this, however, the state may interfere wherever the public interests demand it, and in this particular a large discretion is necessarily vested in the legislature to determine not only what the interests of the public require, but what measures are necessary for the protection of such interests. Barbier v. Connolly, 113 U. S. 27; Kidd v. Pearson, 128 U. S. 1.
Commonwealth v. Chapin, 5 Pick. 199; McCready v. Virginia. 94 U. S. 391; Vinton v. Welsh, 9 Pick. 92; Commonwealth v. Essex County, 13 Gray 248; Phelps v. Racey, 60 N.Y. 10; Holyoke Co. v. Lyman, 15 Wall. 500; Gentile v. State, 29 Ind. 409; State v. Lewis, 33 N.E. 1024.
but metes out the proper punishment. This has never been treated as an infraction of the Constitution, though technically a person may in this way be deprived of his liberty without the intervention of a jury. Callan v. Wilson, 127 U. S. 540, and cases cited. So, the summary abatement of nuisances without judicial process or proceeding was well known to the common law long prior to the adoption of the Constitution, and it has never been supposed that the constitutional provision in question in this case was intended to interfere with the established principles in that regard.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.