Constitutional Contagion
COVID, the Courts, and Public Health

This interdisciplinary book examines how the US courts helped create the conditions that made the COVID-19 pandemic so deadly.

Wendy E. Parmet (Author)

9781009098335, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 1 June 2023

200 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.9 cm, 0.51 kg

'Constitutional Contagion is a compelling tour de force, and essential reading for anyone seeking to understand America's fraught response to the COVID pandemic. No other scholar understands the legal and political conflicts better than Wendy Parmet. With clear, insightful explanation, Parmet shows us that thoughtful law and reasoned governance are possible even in the midst of a deadly pandemic. But to face a pandemic future, we must implement reforms now, rather than give in to the complacency that has so often followed serious outbreaks of contagious disease throughout our history.' Polly Price, Emory University School of Law

Constitutional law has helped make Americans unhealthy. Drawing from law, history, political theory, and public health research, Constitutional Contagion explores the history of public health laws, the nature of liberty and individual rights, and the forces that make a nation more or less vulnerable to contagion. In this groundbreaking work, Wendy Parmet documents how the Supreme Court departed from past practice to stymie efforts to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic and demonstrates how pre-pandemic court decisions helped to shatter social contracts, weaken democracy, and perpetuate the inequities that made the United States especially vulnerable when COVID-19 struck. Looking at judicial decisions from an earlier era, Parmet argues that the Constitution does not compel the stark individualism and disregard of public health that is evident in contemporary constitutional law decisions. Parmet shows us why, if we are to be a healthy nation, constitutional law must change.

Introduction: Disaster Awaits
1. A New Approach
2. Salus Populi Suprema Lex
3. The End of Salus Populi
4. COVID Comes to Court
5. The Mandate Wars
6. An Asymmetry of Rights
7. An Unequal Pandemic
8. The Infodemic
9. An Unhealthy Polity
Conclusion: 'A Republic, If You Can Keep It'.

Subject Areas: Medical & healthcare law [LNTM], Public health & safety law [LNTJ], Constitutional & administrative law [LND], Politics & government [JP]