The COVID-19 pandemic and associated measures to contain the spread and adverse effects of the infection on human lives have intensified debates on the implications of mandatory vaccination requirements for individual rights and freedoms. Although the pandemic had taken a vast toll on human lives across the planet since early 2020, the introduction of expedited emergency vaccines towards the end of the year in many of the industrialized countries of the global North, among other measures, have contributed to vast improvements in global health and other areas of life. The growing uptake of the vaccines in most areas has coincided with rapid reductions in the number of infections, morbidity, and mortality rates from COVID-19 (Gupta, et al. 1467-72). However, the widespread global vaccination efforts and campaigns have hit a familiar hurdle: persistent anti-vaccination attitudes in the general population. While the traditional concerns about the safety of vaccines and conspiracy theories continue to drive some of this resistance, most emanate from claims that government measures to promote and protect public health through COVID-19 vaccination, including enforcing vaccine mandates and vaccine passports, infringe of individual freedoms and liberties (Todd). In some cases, restrictions on some individual freedoms, however, might be justified to protect others’ freedoms and liberties as in the case of state and federal vaccine mandates to protect and promote public health.
Vaccine mandate skeptics’ concerns about the possible implications of government-mandated COVID-19 vaccination and vaccine passports on individual freedoms are well-anchored in the concept of civil liberties in the American constitution and as a human right. The right to individual liberty, as enshrined in the American constitution through its 27 amendments, and elsewhere in the constitutions of many other democratic countries worldwide, draws closely from John Locke’s conceptualization of natural right notions. According to Friedrich (841), the natural right perceptions drew from the view that humans have a fixed and rational nature that justifies certain rights that, when absent or restricted from his access, make them no longer human. These rights, as proclaimed by President Roosevelt and anchored in the earliest constitutional amendments in the US constitution, included three major freedoms: the right to life, liberty, property, and later on, the pursuit of happiness (Friedrich 841)). Liberty, hereby conceptualized as individual freedoms, describes every human being’s right to do as they want in pursuit of their human development and personal happiness. In other words, freedoms are constitutional protections protecting against the states’ or other authorities’ imposition of contains to the individual’s actions or restraint from doing something or pursuing specific conditions of character (Garvey 1757). Within this view of civil liberties, anti-vaxxers, skeptics, and critics of COVID-19 mandates could, therefore, argue justifiably that the American state’s decrees for mandatory public vaccination violate protections against, for instance, the individual freedoms of conscience and choice.
Upholding individual freedoms is immensely beneficial to individuals and society. For background, there is a widespread recognition that the fact the constitutional focus on protecting and promoting civil liberties originates from the idea of the social contract that is not only the most foundation of civilization, the modern state, and indeed, the United States as a civilized society (Weber 3). The fundamental premise of the social contract theory, therefore, is that, in civilized society, individuals give up some of the rights espoused in the state of nature to obtain the rights of citizens. Accordingly, even the detractors acknowledge that, as the law, which is the forte of the state, offers the state immense powers to act in violation of individual rights when protecting the rest of the society, individual liberties, in their negative connotation, denote the absence of coercion against human being’s right to do as they want. Put differently, individual liberties, including the freedom of conscience and choice cited in opposition to vaccine mandates, largely exist to protect individuals against government power and despotic coercion (Friedrich 841). As a result, vaccine mandate skeptics can argue that compulsory inoculation via state requirements contravenes individual liberties to be free of government interference when exercising freedoms that, in their view, are essential for their full self-realization, fulfillment, and full development as human beings.
The assertions of vaccine mandate skeptics that government mandates violate individual rights to autonomy to pursue personal development free of constraints by the state, however, ignore the two-sided nature of liberties. From a conceptual point of view, describes the absence of any competing duty for the individual to do or refrain from doing something (Hohfeld 36–39). The two sides of this conceptual framework include one, the freedom to act freely in pursuit of happiness and full development as a human being, and, on the other hand, the absence of any competing duties. While writing about the restrictions to the freedom of expression as individual liberty inherent on all human beings, Gunatilleke argues that liberties only exist when in, exercising their freedoms; the individual owes not compete for duty to others as a constraint on what they are free to do (92). This constraint is closely tied to the concept of choice as a fundamental feature of liberties where people’s freedoms are protected by the constitution from government interference (Garvey 1757). For instance, we can argue that an individual has the freedom of expression to advocate for the election of their candidate of choice as there is no competing duty for them to refrain from such advocacy. In the context of vaccination mandates, it is clear that while skeptics might argue that they do not owe a competing duty to others to refrain from thinking that COVID-19 vaccines are unnecessary, they have a competing duty owed to others as shunning inoculation poses immense dangers to the health of the society. Therefore, while individual freedoms might be beneficial to individuals, they might harm society if not exercised with consideration of the competing duty owed to the rest of society.  
Restrictions can be applied to individual freedoms that do not qualify as claim rights to justify prioritizing individual freedoms over the interests of the rest of the society. A “claim right,” with reference to Hohfeld (39) is one where other people have the duty to do or refrain from doing or pursuing a particular course of action even when they have the liberty to do so. From a normative point of view, a claim right confers the owner with an entitlement to claim the performance of protective duties of non-interference from the duty bearers or his or her fellow men (O'neill 131; Feinburg 243). For instance, the freedom of conscience is a claim right as every individual human being has the right to claim non-interference with the conscionable thought from the government and the rest of the society. According to Raz (166), claimable rights derive their priority protections from their connections to foundational underlying interests that the rights seek to protect. Fundamental freedoms, then, are only applicable when there is sufficient reason for the individual to hold claim from others to be under a fundamental duty to protect them. For instance, the freedom of expression and thought appeal to the foundational values of human autonomy and dignity, which are fundamental interests that guarantee sufficient reason for a high degree of protection from government intervention. The right to choose whether to have a vaccine or not, here, if individual liberty whose underlying interests, clearly, are inferior to the public health interest interests behind vaccine mandates. Hence, claim rights borne by the rest of the society can override personal freedoms where public rights, appeal to more foundational interests and values such as the right to safety and society’s survival.
The opponents of vaccine mandates and restrictions on individual freedoms can’t have it both ways. On the one hand, many of the skeptics argue that the freedom of choice, conscience and other liberties cited when rallying against government intervention in individual freedoms are morally and legally unjustified as constraints as they are fundamental rights without with people would cease being human beings. When applied to fundamental rights such as the right to life, which, without its existence, people would not have developed fully as humans, this argument easily holds sway. However, claims of the freedoms of individuals to stay from government interference via federal and state vaccine mandates are clearly contradictory with regards to how they interfere with people’s abilities to develop fully as humans (Friedrich 843). Although their claims appeal to the foundational value of human autonomy, they are incongruent with the values of human dignity and other fundamental values associated with people’s rights to life and good health. An individual cannot have the opportunity to full development and existence as a human being when their individual freedoms offer the choices to self-harm and interference with others’ rights to life, self-realization, and self-fulfillment.
Most people objecting to the occasional restrictions on individual freedoms equally fail to consider the implications of the social contract on the extent to which governments can interfere with individual liberties. While concurring that people should have the free will to choose their religions and whether or not they will participate in an exercise that interferes with personal autonomy over the individual’s own body like vaccination, I disagree with the view that such rights are absolute and thus cannot be interfered with even in the direst times when public health would be at risk if they are protected. Friedrich (841) contends that the rationalist belief that natural rights were extremely fundamental where without them people ceased to be human drove the initial belief that natural rights, primarily the right to life, were “immutable, inalienable, and inviolable” (841). Within a social contract view of the existence of a civilized society, however, it is widely recognized that a civilized society cannot exist if people do not give up certain rights to get this protection. In other words, civil liberties cannot exist without the existence of the state as a body mandated to protect public interests when necessary where people give up some of their natural rights to enjoy civil liberties, even when due process suffices. Thus, arguing against vaccine mandates on the premise that it infringes on the right to state non-interference in individual freedoms reflects a misguided notion that individual freedoms are absolute and unchangeable, even when interference is meant to promote individual freedoms. In other words, civil liberties, and indeed a civilized society, would cease to exist if the government was permanently restricted from applying laws to protect the same liberties.
While government restrictions of individual freedoms through, say, vaccine mandates meant to protect and promote public health is necessary, there is sufficient reason for public vigilance to ensure such restrictions are not excessive. As aforementioned, civil liberties exist to protect against government interference on people’s free will and the freedom to freely pursue happiness and their full development as humans. Excessive government interference through, say, the states’ extensive digital surveillance of people’s lives as seen in places such as China during the height of the global coronavirus pandemic, has the potential to do more public harm than good and is thus qualifies as an unjust restriction of individual freedoms. The existence of the due clause in the US constitution, for instance, acts to balance between government interference for public good and protections of individual freedoms. Previous court cases in the US, including Jacobson v. Massachusetts and Zucht v. King, affirm the US government’s constitutionality and adherence to due process when implementing vaccine mandates. Emergency laws restricting freedoms during pandemics, for instance, must be necessary, proportionate, and non-discriminatory to be just. From our argument, modern vaccine mandate skeptics and other proponents of absolutions’ view of individual liberties are yet to offer compelling arguments why the state’s restrictions to individual freedoms to protect public health is not necessary or justified.