Description
Book SynopsisLaw plays a crucial role in protecting the health of populations. Whether the public health threat is bioterrorism, pandemic influenza, obesity, or lung cancer, law is an essential tool for addressing the problem. Yet for many decades, courts and lawyers have frequently overlooked law's critical importance to public health. "Populations, Public Health, and the Law" seeks to remedy that omission.The book demonstrates why public health protection is a vital objective for the law and presents a new population-based approach to legal analysis that can help law achieve its public health mission while remaining true to its own core values. By looking at a diverse range of topics, including food safety, death and dying, and pandemic preparedness, Wendy E. Parmet shows how a population-based legal analysis that recalls the importance of populations and uses the tools of public health can enhance legal decision making while protecting both public health and the rights and liberties of individuals and their communities.
Trade ReviewA provocative, milestone contribution to the growing body of public health law scholarship. Journal of Legal Medicine Parmet offers a compelling, cohesive account of how lawmakers and policymakers view the role of law in protecting population health. Hastings Center Report
Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Public Health and the Population Perspective 2. Public Health and American Law 3. Toward a Population-Based Legal Analysis: The Supreme Beef Case 4. Population Health and Federalism: Whose Job is It? 5. Individual Rights, Population Health, and Due Process 6. A Right to Die? Further Reflections on Due Process Rights 7. The First Amendment and the Obesity Epidemic 8. A Population-Based Health Law 9. Tort Law: A Population Approach to Private Law 10. Globalizing Population-Based Legal Analysis 11. The Future for Population-Based Legal Analysis Table of U.S. Cases Index
