Law and the Public's Health

The varied responses to our latest pandemic have embroiled all three branches of the U.S. government—as well as the private sector—in a dizzying range of legal disputes, colored by growing partisanship and deepening ideological divisions. This casebook includes 140 judicial decisions, more than one-third of which are less than three years old and almost one-quarter of which relate to Covid-19. Other included case law covers the likes of smallpox, influenza, HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, salmonella and other bacterial threats, smoking and vaping, obesity and diabetes, drug and alcohol abuse, gun violence, motor vehicle accidents, and lead contamination.

Instead of focusing on either discrete issue areas (e.g., respiratory contagions) or clusters of legal rules (e.g., free exercise of religion), this casebook groups the excerpted opinions and affiliated discussion by reference to the various tools available for promoting the public's health, broadly divided according to whether government intervention aims to manage (1) people, (2) places, (3) things, or (4) information. Obviously, these tools often overlap, and the final chapter attempts to recombine them in assessing the multifaceted nature of policy responses to a handful of modern problems.

Designed for use in law school, Law and the Public's Health focuses specifically on public law rather than health law and medical ethics, making it an accessible casebook for law students without a background in medicine.

There is a set of 147 PowerPoint slides available upon adoption. Click here to view a sample presentation. If you are a professor using this book for a class, please contact Rachael Meier at remeier@cap-press.com to request your slides.