The role of law in public health

Abstract

Is there anything which law can contribute to the improvement of public health? We already have a profession of public health practitioners from a wide range of disciplines, epidemiologists, statisticians, doctors, sociologists, research scientists and health economists, doing sterling work to protect us from communicable and non-communicable disease. We also have a developing scholarship on public health ethics, not yet as sophisticated and refined as medical ethics, but with the potential to provide a useful framework for good public health practice. Is there any added value in introducing law as yet another form of public health governance? [opening paragraph]