Global health law and governance: concepts, tools, actors and power

By foregrounding a widened view of the rule of law in transnational legal processes, the works under discussion in this symposium can support innovative critical perspectives on global health law –a field that has gained wide attention due to the spread of COVID-19 around the world (Lander, 2020; Bhatt, 2020). Legal and socio-legal scholars in the decade and a half before the pandemic worked on locating global health law and articulating its underlying principles. Lawrence Gostin's 2014 monograph offers a synoptic view centred on international institutions (e.g. the World Health Organization, World Trade Organization, UN Human Rights Council) and problems (e.g. infectious-disease response, tobacco control), along with an elaboration of its normative basis in universal moral principle and international human rights law (Gostin, 2014). Struggles over access to essential medicines and intellectual property in the early 2000s are, for example, represented in terms of the right to health constraining international trade law. Andreas Fischer-Lescano and Guenther Teubner's 2004 reading is oriented more by social theory than by doctrinal or ethical frames (Fischer-Lescano and Teubner, 2004, pp. 1006, 1008). A functional health regime has ‘differentiated out’, they observe, and operates as a discrete communication system across borders, albeit one that is threatened by the preponderant economic system. On this model, the battle for access to medicines amounts to ensuring, via human rights guarantees, that the rationality of the health system is not replaced by that of its economic rival in legal and policy communications (Fischer-Lescano and Teubner, 2004, pp. 1030, 1046).

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Global Health Law

Global Health Diplomacy ◽

10.1007/978-1-4614-5401-4_4 ◽

2012 ◽

pp. 37-54 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Allyn L. Taylor

Keyword(s):

Global Health ◽

Health Law

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Institutional Transparency in Global Health Law-making: The World Health Organization and the Implementation of the International Health Regulations

Transparency in International Law ◽

10.1017/cbo9781139108843.016 ◽

2013 ◽

pp. 271-294 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Emily A. Bruemmer ◽

Allyn L. Taylor

Keyword(s):

Global Health ◽

World Health Organization ◽

International Health ◽

World Health ◽

Health Law ◽

International Health Regulations ◽

The World ◽

Health Organization ◽

Health Regulations ◽

Law Making

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Assessing National Public Health Law to Prevent Infectious Disease Outbreaks: Immunization Law as a Basis for Global Health Security

The Journal of Law Medicine & Ethics ◽

10.1177/1073110519876174 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 47 (3) ◽

pp. 412-426 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Tsion Berhane Ghedamu ◽

Benjamin Mason Meier

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Infectious Disease ◽

Global Health ◽

Assessment Tool ◽

Disease Outbreaks ◽

Health Law ◽

Global Health Security ◽

Public Health Law ◽

Health Security ◽

National Immunization

Immunization plays a crucial role in global health security, preventing public health emergencies of international concern and protecting individuals from infectious disease outbreaks, yet these critical public health benefits are dependent on immunization law. Where public health law has become central to preventing, detecting, and responding to infectious disease, public health law reform is seen as necessary to implement the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA). This article examines national immunization laws as a basis to implement the GHSA and promote the public's health, analyzing the scope and content of these laws to prevent infectious disease across Sub-Saharan Africa. Undertaking policy surveillance of national immunization laws in 20 Sub-Saharan African countries, this study: (1) developed a legal framework to map the legal attributes relevant to immunization; (2) created an assessment tool to determine the presence of these attributes under national immunization law; and (3) applied this assessment tool to code national legal landscapes. An analysis of these coded laws highlights legal attributes that govern vaccine requirements, supply chains, vaccine administration standards, and medicines quality and manufacturer liability. Based upon this international policy surveillance, it will be crucial to undertake legal epidemiology research across countries, examining the influence of immunization law on vaccination rates and disease outbreaks.

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