LAW 862 - Public Health Law Seminar

College of Law
3 credit(s) Irregularly

This course deals with the law which empowers, tailors and limits federal, state and local governmental efforts to enhance and protect the health of the general population. It will make use of case studies of government educational and regulatory efforts in several areas of historic and very current controversy to examine issues which commonly arise with that law. The course will introduce students to the constitutional foundations and limits on the essential power of national, state and local governments and their officials to protect the health of individuals in areas where such protection may conflict with other important rights, such as with abortion, `immoral behavior, religious practices and beliefs, and with seat belts, ferrets and fluoridation. It will examine the use of peculiarly public-health-protective techniques such as quarantine and other liberty-restricting methods in the context of traditional diseases such as tuberculosis, newer diseases such as HIV/AIDS, and more recent threats of pandemic (including the H1N1 flu) and biological terrorism. Recognizing the public health system’s needs for accurate information in fashioning government responses and programs, the course will look at the law related to public health surveillance the law about the effective collection and maintenance of information and its use in biomedical research. In examining case studies about contagious diseases, environmentally-related cancers and DNA-banking, students will be exposed to tensions between the public health system’s need for information and the privacy rights of individuals about whom such information is gathered.