Drawing upon Martha Fineman’s vulnerability theory, the paper argues that the legal claims of homeless appellants before and during the COVID-19 pandemic illustrate our universal vulnerability which stems from the essential, life-sustaining activities flowing from the ontological status of the human body. By recognizing that housing availability has constitutional significance because it provides for life-sustaining activities such as sleeping, eating and lying down, I argue that the legal rationale reviewed in the paper underscores the empirical, ontological reality of the body as the basis for a jurisprudence of universal vulnerability. By tracing the constitutional basis of this jurisprudence from Right to Travel to Eighth Amendment grounds during COVID-19, the paper outlines a distinct legal paradigm for understanding vulnerability in its universal, constant and essential form – one of the central premises of vulnerability theory.

该论文借鉴 Martha Fineman 的脆弱性理论，认为在 COVID-19 大流行之前和期间无家可归的上诉人的法律主张说明了我们普遍的脆弱性，这种脆弱性源于人体本体状态所产生的基本的、维持生命的活动。通过承认住房可用性具有宪法意义，因为它提供了维持生命的活动，例如睡觉、吃饭和躺下，我认为，本文中审查的法律原理强调了身体的经验性、本体论现实，作为法理学的基础普遍脆弱性。通过追溯该判例的宪法基础，从旅行权到 COVID-19 期间的第八修正案，