Fall 2005 Course Schedule

Public Health Law (LAW-834-001)
Bruner

Meets: 03:00 PM - 05:50 PM (M) - Room 528

Enrolled: 14 / Limit: 20

Administrator Access


Notices

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Description

Most health law courses are concerned with legal regulation of the practice of medicine – the diagnosis and treatment of sick individuals by licensed medical professionals. By contrast, public health law focuses on measures intended to protect or improve the health of populations, or the health of the community, as distinct from the health of particular individuals. Public health measures include supplying certain public goods that are not adequately supplied by private markets (e.g., sanitation and inoculation against certain diseases); reducing certain negative externalities of market behavior (e.g., environmental pollution produced by business enterprises, second-hand tobacco smoke, reckless driving, and driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol); and regulating or otherwise seeking to affect the flow of information to the public and the "social meanings" that affect health-related behavior.

Public health law raises issues of federalism, privacy and other individual rights, criminal law, First Amendment law (particularly the commercial speech doctrine), and takings law. We will pay particular attention to difficult policy issues raised by HIV/AIDS, the tobacco industry, the use of illegal drugs, and the threat of bio-terrorism. These issues of public policy and legal doctrine also provide an opportunity for us to look at several fundamental questions underlying our legal system, society and culture. These issues include:

  • The justifications for, and dangers of, government paternalism – laws intended to protect people from the consequences of certain activities that are dangerous to them.

  • Social and economic determinants of ill health, including inequality, racism, sexism and homophobia.

  • The relationships between moral values, science and the law. (Should public health law and policy be value-free? Is it too simplistic to see public health policy as a battleground between "science" and "moralism"?)

In order to approach these questions, we will pay close attention not only to case law and other legal materials, but also to writings by economists, sociologists, political and moral philosophers, and, of course, public health practitioners.

Grades will be based on a final examination and on class participation.

Textbooks and Other Materials

The textbook information on this page was provided by the instructor. Students should use this information when considering purchases from the AU Campus Store or other vendors. Students may check to determine if books are currently available for purchase online.

1) The required text is: PUBLIC HEALTH LAW AND ETHICS: A READER (Lawrence O. Gostin ed. 2002) ("READER")
2) Additional required readings will be provided in a Course Packet.
3) The following recent work is the best treatise on public health law of which I am aware. I have asked the library to put a couple of copies on reserve: Lawrence O. Gostin, PUBLIC HEALTH LAW: POWER DUTY, RESTRAINT (2000).

First Class Readings

August 22 - Although this assignment may seem extensive for the first class, much of the material is background information. I believe the material will be more coherent if it is read in the order set out below. Please pay particular attention to the Brandt article, as it is somewhat more demanding and highlights issues that we will keep returning to in the course.
1) READER, pp. 1-10, 35-41
2) In the Course Packet: Alan M. Brandt, Behavior, Disease, and Health in the Twentieth-Century United States: The Moral Valence of Individual Risk, in MORALITY AND HEALTH (Alan M. Brandt & Paul Rozin eds., 1997)
3) READER, pp. 24-35
4) In the Course Packet: Institute of Medicine, THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC’S HEALTH IN THE 21ST CENTURY (2003), pp. 101-06, 107-16

Syllabus

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