Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2016
ISSN
0098-8588
Publisher
Boston University School of Law, American Society of Law & Medicine
Language
en-US
Abstract
As Jacobson v. Massachusetts recognized in 1905, the basis of public health law, and its ability to limit constitutional rights, is the use of scientific data and empirical evidence. Far too often, this important fact is lost. Fear, misinformation, and politics frequently take center stage and drive the implementation of public health law. In the recent Ebola scare, political leaders passed unnecessary and unconstitutional quarantine measures that defied scientific understanding of the disease and caused many to have their rights needlessly constrained. Looking at HIV criminalization and exemptions to childhood vaccine requirements, it becomes clear that the blame cannot be placed on the hysteria that accompanies emergencies. Indeed, these examples merely illustrate an unfortunate array of examples where empirical evidence is ignored in the hopes of quelling paranoia. These policy approaches are not only constitutionally questionable, they generate their own risk to public health. The ability of the law to jeopardize public health approaches to infectious disease control can, and should, be limited through a renewed emphasis on science as the foundation of public health, coordination through all levels and branches of government, and through a serious commitment by the judiciary to provide oversight. Infectious disease creates public anxiety, but this cannot justify unwarranted dogmatic approaches as a response. If we as a society hope to ensure efficient, constitutional control over the spread of disease, it is imperative that science take its rightful place at the forefront of governmental decision-making and judicial review. Otherwise, the law becomes its own public health threat.
Recommended Citation
Michael Ulrich,
Law and Politics, an Emerging Epidemic: A Call for Evidence-Based Public Health Law
,
in
42
American Journal of Law and Medicine
256
(2016).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/1186
Included in
Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Evidence Commons, Health Law and Policy Commons, Human Rights Law Commons, Public Law and Legal Theory Commons
