Abstract:Although epidemics are generally understood as lying within the domain of biomedicine, legal and social arrangements play crucial roles in determining whether or not infectious disease outbreaks grow into epidemics and even pandemics. Yet epidemics are challenging terrain for legal regulation. Because epidemics cross political borders and span jurisdictional boundaries, funding for epidemic prevention, preparedness, and response is always inadequate and coordination is difficult. Because epidemics require rapi… Show more
“…Heimer and Davis (2022) note that law has arguably been the primarily non‐pharmaceutical treatment for the prevention and control of COVID‐19. The experience of the pandemic is therefore useful for thinking about relationship between law and public health, and the gap between theoretical capabilities (roughly the “law in books”) and actual outcomes (in part, the “law in action”).…”
Section: Pandemic Law Emergency Powers and The Sociolegal Traditionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In this sense, they ask:What is about epidemic that makes them such difficult terrain for law? Legal tools might be more useful in helping control epidemics if they more fully took account of the unique characteristics of the biological and medical materials with which they must work (Heimer & Davis, 2022, 2).The effect of law as a “non‐pharmaceutical treatment” for infectious diseases can be hard to measure whether we are looking for the positive effects of good law thoughtfully deployed, the negative effects of refusing to use available legal tools, or the counterproductive effects of law that aims to undermine the work of public officials.…”
Section: Pandemic Law Emergency Powers and The Sociolegal Traditionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…What is about epidemic that makes them such difficult terrain for law? Legal tools might be more useful in helping control epidemics if they more fully took account of the unique characteristics of the biological and medical materials with which they must work (Heimer & Davis, 2022, 2).…”
Section: Pandemic Law Emergency Powers and The Sociolegal Traditionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…At a most obvious level, these questions direct our attention to discussions and disputes in the terrain of public law, constitutionalism, individual rights, international law, and public health policy. Governmental responses to the COVID‐19 pandemic have generated numerous legal, constitutional, political, and economic debates (Heimer & Davis, 2022; Meierhenrich, 2021). Public debates have been dominated by discussion on the role of emergency powers and executive orders, the suspension of individual civil liberties, the suspension of economic rules in order to guarantee the survival of the economy, and to stimulate recovery of economic growth and the social regulation of the home, of public spaces and of workplaces.…”
Governmental responses to the COVID‐19 global pandemic have generated numerous constitutionals, policy, legal, and political‐economic debates. Scholarly engagements with the sociolegal and policy consequences of the COVID‐19 pandemic have been dominated by discussion on the role of emergency powers, the suspension of individual civil liberties, the suspension of economic rules in order to guarantee economic survival, and social regulation of public spaces and of workplaces. This paper aims to explore how a critical sociolegal scholarship can contribute to a more sophisticated understanding of the role of law in creating the unequal conditions that propitiated the COVID‐19 pandemic and that might enable further crises. This introduction offers a roadmap for theorizing the limits of law, the operationalization of emergency powers and the different policies implemented by global south and north countries in response to the pandemic. This introduction is structured as follow: (1) provides a general overview of the law and society tradition and its engagement with the COVID‐19 pandemic; (2) engages with three key consequences of the pandemic, labor, and the lockdown; colonial implications; and the limits of law; (3) introduces the papers in this special issue; (4) sketches a proposal for the critical sociolegal scholarship of law and crises.
“…Heimer and Davis (2022) note that law has arguably been the primarily non‐pharmaceutical treatment for the prevention and control of COVID‐19. The experience of the pandemic is therefore useful for thinking about relationship between law and public health, and the gap between theoretical capabilities (roughly the “law in books”) and actual outcomes (in part, the “law in action”).…”
Section: Pandemic Law Emergency Powers and The Sociolegal Traditionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In this sense, they ask:What is about epidemic that makes them such difficult terrain for law? Legal tools might be more useful in helping control epidemics if they more fully took account of the unique characteristics of the biological and medical materials with which they must work (Heimer & Davis, 2022, 2).The effect of law as a “non‐pharmaceutical treatment” for infectious diseases can be hard to measure whether we are looking for the positive effects of good law thoughtfully deployed, the negative effects of refusing to use available legal tools, or the counterproductive effects of law that aims to undermine the work of public officials.…”
Section: Pandemic Law Emergency Powers and The Sociolegal Traditionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…What is about epidemic that makes them such difficult terrain for law? Legal tools might be more useful in helping control epidemics if they more fully took account of the unique characteristics of the biological and medical materials with which they must work (Heimer & Davis, 2022, 2).…”
Section: Pandemic Law Emergency Powers and The Sociolegal Traditionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…At a most obvious level, these questions direct our attention to discussions and disputes in the terrain of public law, constitutionalism, individual rights, international law, and public health policy. Governmental responses to the COVID‐19 pandemic have generated numerous legal, constitutional, political, and economic debates (Heimer & Davis, 2022; Meierhenrich, 2021). Public debates have been dominated by discussion on the role of emergency powers and executive orders, the suspension of individual civil liberties, the suspension of economic rules in order to guarantee the survival of the economy, and to stimulate recovery of economic growth and the social regulation of the home, of public spaces and of workplaces.…”
Governmental responses to the COVID‐19 global pandemic have generated numerous constitutionals, policy, legal, and political‐economic debates. Scholarly engagements with the sociolegal and policy consequences of the COVID‐19 pandemic have been dominated by discussion on the role of emergency powers, the suspension of individual civil liberties, the suspension of economic rules in order to guarantee economic survival, and social regulation of public spaces and of workplaces. This paper aims to explore how a critical sociolegal scholarship can contribute to a more sophisticated understanding of the role of law in creating the unequal conditions that propitiated the COVID‐19 pandemic and that might enable further crises. This introduction offers a roadmap for theorizing the limits of law, the operationalization of emergency powers and the different policies implemented by global south and north countries in response to the pandemic. This introduction is structured as follow: (1) provides a general overview of the law and society tradition and its engagement with the COVID‐19 pandemic; (2) engages with three key consequences of the pandemic, labor, and the lockdown; colonial implications; and the limits of law; (3) introduces the papers in this special issue; (4) sketches a proposal for the critical sociolegal scholarship of law and crises.
“…Governmental responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have generated numerous legal, constitutional, political, and economic debates (Heimer and Davis, 2022; Meierhenrich, 2021). These public debates have been dominated by discussion on the role of emergency powers, executive orders, and the suspension of economic rules to guarantee the survival of the economy.…”
The US and Puerto Rican governments’ anti-corruption and anti-fraud legislation and policies exacerbated the socio-economic impacts of the coronavirus disease (COVID)-19 pandemic in Puerto Rico (PR). This article demonstrates how anti-corruption interventions prevented those in most need from receiving the economic benefits of the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program and other unemployment insurance benefits. Analyzing this specific instance of anti-corruption and anti-fraud interventions amid the COVID-19 pandemic allows for a deeper examination of how colonial interventions undermined PR’s capacity to handle the pandemic, exacerbated its socio-economic impact and created an unequal recovery. Thus, the article illustrates the contradictions of anti-corruption as punitive governance and the way in which a specific notion of corruption is reproduced through governmental actions, legal practices, and policies. Altogether, this article aims to contribute to the discussion on how colonial and punitive anti-corruption interventions enhance social exclusion, disproportionately harm racialized communities, and undermine people’s capacity to address period of crisis.
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