Ebola and Korematsu

Ebola is an unprecedented public health crisis, but quarantine falls squarely within a long tradition of preventive detention: depriving liberty not to punish past wrongdoing but to prevent future harm.  In a recent article(here), I argue that the government has resorted to indefinite preventive detention only in response to fear of an undeterrable Other.  That conclusion (descriptive, not normative) is based on case studies of the Japanese internment, the Oklahoma City bombing, the War on Terror, both phases of sex offender commitment, and the Virginia Tech shooting. 

In my formulation, Otherness is perhaps the most elusive concept.  By it I mean being a member of an identifiable and devalued minority group.  Affected Others have included Japanese-Americans, Arab non-citizens, sex offenders, and the mentally ill.  But the Ebola quarantine teaches that Otherness is not required for short-term, as opposed to indefinite, preventive detention.  Fear of an undeterrable virus is enough.