By Daniel Goldberg
The nirvana fallacy “is the informal fallacy of comparing actual things with unrealistic, idealized alternatives.” Practice and policy guided by the nirvana fallacy discourages any action at all short of a perfect solution.
Sound familiar? It’s one justification for pandemic policy inaction in a nutshell.
By Victoria Sutton
Native American Nations are sovereigns and acknowledged in the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court has further established the sovereignty of Native Nations in early cases that form the foundation of Federal Indian Law.
By Marshall B. Kapp
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Public Health Establishment (PHE)/legal enterprise collaborative fell short of constitutional standards in a number of situations, resulting in adverse judicial rulings of which the PHE and its like-minded academic advocates now complain.
This unhappiness with judicial oversight is an opportunity for introspection. Rather than blaming nefarious or deplorable other forces, a better approach to rehabilitating and enhancing public health law in the future lies instead in the PHE taking stock of itself and committing to a more open-minded, humility infused, and objective approach to the definition of science, the role of expertise, and the better targeted and clearly justified employment of legal force in the next major public health emergency context.
By Taleed El-Sabawi
The use of emergency public health powers by state and local governments during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic led to intense public criticism followed by legislative attempts (include some successes) to strip state executives of this authority. This has led some to ask: is this the end of public health law? What does the future hold?
For public health law to survive, it needs a good defense. It needs passionate advocates. It needs a growing constituency that understands its utility and its importance in protecting the health of the population. But, let’s face it. I would wager a guess that the vast majority of law students, law professors, and law school administrators do not even know what public health law is.
By Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research
COVID-19 called for quick, decisive action by public health authorities to support communities and prevent infections. Since the pandemic began, legislators around the country have been acting to change the way authorities may respond to future public health emergencies — expanding or limiting officials’ authority to act in an emergency, changing who has authority to act, and the actions they may have the authority to take.
New research by the Center for Public Health Law Research at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law, in collaboration with the Association for State and Territorial Health Officials and the Network for Public Health Law, capture details of legislation that addresses emergency health authority introduced between January 1, 2021, and May 20, 2022, in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.