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.

A concise history of how American law has shaped—and been shaped by—the experience of contagion“Contrarians and the civic-minded alike will find Witt’s legal survey a fascinating resource”—Kirkus, starred review “Professor Witt’s book is an original and thoughtful contribution to the interdisciplinary study of disease and American law. Although he covers the broad sweep of the American experience of epidemics from yellow fever to COVID-19, he is especially timely in his exploration of the legal background to the current disaster of the American response to the coronavirus. A thought-provoking, readable, and important work.”—Frank Snowden, author of Epidemics and Society From yellow fever to smallpox to polio to AIDS to COVID-19, epidemics have prompted Americans to make choices and answer questions about their basic values and their laws. In five concise chapters, historian John Fabian Witt traces the legal history of epidemics, showing how infectious disease has both shaped, and been shaped by, the law. Arguing that throughout American history legal approaches to public health have been liberal for some communities and authoritarian for others, Witt shows us how history’s answers to the major questions brought up by previous epidemics help shape our answers today: What is the relationship between individual liberty and the common good? What is the role of the federal government, and what is the role of the states? Will long-standing traditions of government and law give way to the social imperatives of an epidemic? Will we let the inequities of our mixed tradition continue?

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed an unprecedented governance challenge, with governments resorting to very different (legal) strategies to respond to the health emergency. A rich literature is already dedicated to measures adopted in individual States. This article adds an original comparative contribution to that literature by exploring the influence of specific constitutional features on the legal response to the pandemic and how, in turn, these responses have the potential to reconfigure the institutional frameworks in place. Our analysis shows that both constitutional contexts and legal traditions significantly matter in pandemic times, in particular when it comes to the rule of law credentials of measures adopted. We focus our study on measures taken during first six months of the pandemic (the “first wave”) in four European jurisdictions with significantly different constitutional settlements; namely France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Following a contextual approach, the comparative analysis concentrates on four macro-issues: 1) the legal bases of adopted measures; 2) the horizontal allocation of power; 3) the vertical allocation of power; and 4) the role of the judiciary, especially in terms of fundamental rights protection. Across all four analytical categories, constitutional and institutional factors - such as the respective forms of government, vertical power conflicts, presence of pre-existing emergency schemes or legal doctrines, and the structure of the judicial systems - significantly impacted the (legal) path taken in the four jurisdictions under scrutiny and, importantly, reinforced pre-existing patterns of institutional shifts or social and political tensions. In particular, the role of two institutional features generally overlooked in the literature on the matter emerged: the concrete functioning of the vertical allocation of power and the reciprocal relationships between different jursdictions within judicial systems. By these means, this article aims to broaden and enrich the analytical toolkit of the literature concerning the relationship between states of emergency and specific forms of constitutional government and State.

During the Antebellum era, thousands of free black sailors were arrested for violating the Negro Seamen Acts. In retelling the harrowing experiences of free black sailors, Moral Contagion highlights the central roles that race and international diplomacy played in the development of American citizenship.

What is the precedented social and economic disruption occasioned by the pandemic raises questions about the proportionality and "legitimate extent suitability of the measures that the federal government is im- of the federal posing. [...] It has suspended the normal business of the main chamber, reduced the number and frequency with which written questions can be tabled and reduced Parliament to a shadow of its former self in the form of a Special COVID-19 Committee of the Whole. [...] The provinces will be expected to table a plan for the reconstitution of civil rights from their temporary suspension, following the concentration of governing power in the hands of the executive - and to do so in a manner consistent with the principles of parliamentary sovereignty and the Canadian Constitution (see Roach 2008). [...] The Parliament of Canada has voted on exceptional measures at an unprecedented pace in this "why the federal emergency, and has thus shown itself to have the knowledge government may and expertise to uphold Canada's fundamental constitutional principle: responsible government, or the ability of the people, have held off through their elected representatives, to hold the government on invoking the [...] The deficiencies of the EMA, especially in the early days of an outbreak, were already flagged in the aftermath of SARS (Wilson and Lazar 2006).

Sixty percent of infectious human diseases are shared with other vertebrates. Alan Olmstead and Paul Rhode tell how innovations to combat livestock infections—border control, food inspection, drug regulation, federal research labs—turned the U.S. into a world leader in combatting communicable diseases, and remain central to public health policy.

An expert legal review of the US government’s response to epidemics through history—with larger conclusions about COVID-19, and reforms needed for the next plague In this narrative history of the US through major outbreaks of contagious disease, from yellow fever to the Spanish flu, from HIV/AIDS to Ebola, Polly J. Price examines how law and government affected the outcome of epidemics—and how those outbreaks in turn shaped our government. Price presents a fascinating history that has never been fully explored and draws larger conclusions about the gaps in our governmental and legal response. Plagues in the Nation examines how our country learned—and failed to learn—how to address the panic, conflict, and chaos that are the companions of contagion, what policies failed America again and again, and what we must do better next time.

This paper examines emerging trends in the responses of governments and religious communities to the COVID-19 health crisis. It reviews the initial measures taken by the authorities, along with the early compliance of churches, observing that mutual collaboration represents the "finest hour" in recent church-state relations. However, as questions arose over the potency of the disease, perceived inconsistency of policies, and political acquiescence to racial protest movements, dynamics began to shift. A minority of religious communities appealed to the sovereignty of divine law in order to resist extended prohibitions on communal worship. This paper analyzes the implications of such resistance, urging that governments could better achieve their objectives by treating religious communities as essential, autonomous partners striving towards a shared goal.

A work of extraordinary range and striking originality, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen traces the global history of written constitutions from the 1750s to the twentieth century, modifying accepted narratives and uncovering the close connections between the making of constitutions and the making of war. In the process, Linda Colley both reappraises famous constitutions and recovers those that have been marginalized but were central to the rise of a modern world. She brings to the fore neglected sites, such as Corsica, with its pioneering constitution of 1755, and tiny Pitcairn Island in the Pacific, the first place on the globe permanently to enfranchise women. She highlights the role of unexpected players, such as Catherine the Great of Russia, who was experimenting with constitutional techniques with her enlightened Nakaz decades before the Founding Fathers framed the American constitution. Written constitutions are usually examined in relation to individual states, but Colley focuses on how they crossed boundaries, spreading into six continents by 1918 and aiding the rise of empires as well as nations. She also illumines their place not simply in law and politics but also in wider cultural histories, and their intimate connections with print, literary creativity, and the rise of the novel. Colley shows how—while advancing epic revolutions and enfranchising white males—constitutions frequently served over the long nineteenth century to marginalize indigenous people, exclude women and people of color, and expropriate land. Simultaneously, though, she investigates how these devices were adapted by peoples and activists outside the West seeking to resist European and American power. She describes how Tunisia generated the first modern Islamic constitution in 1861, quickly suppressed, but an influence still on the Arab Spring; how Africanus Horton of Sierra Leone—inspired by the American Civil War—devised plans for self-governing nations in West Africa; and how Japan’s Meiji constitution of 1889 came to compete with Western constitutionalism as a model for Indian, Chinese, and Ottoman nationalists and reformers. Vividly written and handsomely illustrated, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen is an absorbing work that—with its pageant of formative wars, powerful leaders, visionary lawmakers and committed rebels—retells the story of constitutional government and the evolution of ideas of what it means to be modern.