Kirkland, WA / USA - circa March 2020: Street view of the Life Care Center of Kirkland building, ground zero of the coronavirus outbreak in Kirkland.

How COVID-19 Could Drive Improvements in Care Facilities (Part II)

By Nicolas Terry, LLM and Tara Sklar, JD, MPH

This post is part II of a two-part series on COVID-19 and care facilities. In the first installment we assessed the centrality of care facilities to the COVID-19 pandemic and outlined the infection risks for residents and workers. In this second installment we will explore how improved regulation and enforcement, combined with liability rules, provide the best path forward to improve an industry that, despite its deficiencies, claims it deserves exceptional immunity.

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Budapest, Hungary.

Hungary’s Response to COVID-19 Vastly Expands Executive Power

By Csaba Győry

Hungary was one of the first countries in Europe to introduce restrictions in order to flatten the curve of COVID-19 infections.

Policy wise, the restrictions overall were similar to those of other European countries. The legal basis for these restrictions, however, has proven very controversial because of the extremely broad sway it provides the executive, and has received a great deal of attention from EU institutions, scholars, and the press.

This is the conundrum of the Hungarian response to COVID-19: an almost unlimited authorization for the executive to rule by decree, which, at the same time, was used relatively sparingly and in a broadly similar manner as in other EU countries.

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Special Pandemic Issue of the Journal of Law and the Biosciences

On March 24, 2020, the Journal of Law and the Biosciences, jointly run by Duke UniversityHarvard University Law School, and Stanford University, put out a call for essays and articles on governance in a time of pandemic. Between April 22 and May 28, it published 25 articles, all of which are available at the Journal’s website free of charge. We expect that more than 20 additional pieces will join them over the next month or so. The following is a regularly updated list, organized by date and time of publication, of what has been published in that special issue to date.

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Lagos, Nigeria.

The Law and Human Rights in Nigeria’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

By Cheluchi Onyemelukwe

To limit the spread of the novel coronavirus, the Nigerian government took restrictive containment measures, with the effect of curtailing fundamental rights. These included lockdowns of various states and a cessation of social and economic activity, except those activities relating to essential services. While these measures followed existing public health advisories, they have raised significant legal, constitutional, human rights, and legitimacy issues.

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Dublin, Ireland.

COVID-19 Lays Bare Ireland’s Selective Approach to Care

By Ruth Fletcher

Between enabling and suffocating legal measures

Tensions between welfarisms that enable and those that suffocate are evident in Ireland’s move to restrict the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in the reaction to it.

Two pieces of emergency legislation passed through Oireachtas Eireann (the Irish Parliament) by March 26th. The Health (Preservation and Protection and other Emergency Measures in the Public Interest) Act 2020 and the Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Act 2020 address a range of social, civil and economic issues.  Read More

Machu Picchu, Peru.

Peru and COVID-19: Quick Response Hampered by Structural Failures

By Eduardo Dargent and Camila Gianella

Peru was among the first Latin American countries to implement legal measures that restrict civil rights in order to stem the spread of COVID-19.

On March 15, with 28 confirmed cases and no deaths, the government issued the Supreme Decree N° 044-2020-PCM declaring a state of emergency for 15 days. Measures in the decree included closing the borders, ordering a general lockdown, forbidding domestic travel, and closing schools, universities, churches, and all non-essential businesses, among others.

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Cape Town, South Africa.

Human Rights, the Rule of Law, and COVID-19 in South Africa

Read an update to this post published April 13, 2021: “One Year Later: COVID-19, Human Rights, and the Rule of Law in South Africa”

By Mark Heywood

South Africa’s first case of COVID-19 was confirmed on March 5th, 2020. Ten days later, on March 15th, 2020, the government utilized the Disaster Management Act (2002) to declare a State of National Disaster. Under this Act, the government set up a National Command Council (NCC) made up of Cabinet Ministers and restricted certain rights necessary to prevent SARS-Cov-2 transmission and “flatten the curve.”

A national lockdown started on March 27th. It was relaxed slightly (to level 4) on May 1st, and was further relaxed (to level 3) on June 1st. The lockdown severely restricted freedom of movement, closed all but essential companies and schools, banned the sale of alcohol and tobacco, and introduced a night-time curfew between 8pm and 5am. By May 22nd, the Minister of Police reported that 230,000 people had been arrested for violating lock-down regulations.

The most affected constitutionally recognized rights are freedom of movement, assembly, and trade. However, on paper at least, care has been taken to ensure that political rights and rights to freedom of expression and association are not limited, and the President has couched the country’s response in terms of the Constitution, particularly the rights to life, dignity and access to health care services. He has also frequently referred to the right to equality and promised that in the post COVID-19 period South Africa will do much more to tackle the inequalities that have been exposed by the coronavirus.

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