Book Description

"In this bold fourth edition, Lindsay F. Wiley builds on the foundation laid by Lawrence O. Gostin to define public health law and ethics for a new generation of leaders and scholars. Their examination of the scope and limits of governmental powers and duties to protect the public's health takes on new urgency in light of the devastation caused by the 2020 coronavirus pandemic and the stark inequities it revealed. Their insistence that social justice must be prioritized as a core value of public health ethics animates their analysis of communicable disease control strategies, chronic disease prevention programs, the opioid overdose and gun violence crises, and more. They elucidate what is at stake for the public in legal debates regarding the regulatory powers of administrative agencies, erosion of local government autonomy by state legislatures, and tensions between federal and state officials over safety-net programs. They focus particularly on the role of the courts in striking down popular laws and policies, boosting religious liberty and gun rights, and eroding protections for fundamental rights to sexual and reproductive freedom and racial and gender equality. The book creates an intellectual framework for ensuring that public health interventions are evidence-based and consistent with ethical values. Its incisive analysis of challenging trade-offs between individual rights and collective needs reveals complex answers to the essential question of what fellow community members owe each other when it comes to health"--