Law Commons^™

Three Lost Ebola Facts And Public Health Legal Preparedness, Robert Gatter

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Three key facts about Ebola Transmission should drive policy designed to control the risk of transmission during a crisis.

• Ebola—like HIV—is not easily transmissible human-to-human.
• Ebola has “dry” and “wet” symptoms, and only the wet symptoms threaten public health.
• A fever is Ebola’s canary in a coal mine; it provides timely warning of a coming threat.

Yet, during the U.S. Ebola scare in 2014, these three facts were lost. Unnecessary quarantine, stigma, and burden on those exposed to Ebola resulted, including especially for those who volunteered to fight the disease at its source abroad. Tragically, the law permitted these injustices …

Ebola Does Not Fall From The Sky: Structural Violence & International Responsibility, Matiangai Sirleaf

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article challenges the conventional understanding that international crises are limited to instances of direct physical violence. Instead, it argues that the disproportionate distribution of infectious diseases like Ebola is a form of structural violence that warrants international intervention. In the field of global public health, structural violence is a concept used to describe health inequities and to draw attention to the differential risks for infection in the Global South, and among those already infected, for adverse consequences including death, injury, and illness. This Article clarifies how the concept of structural violence can be operationalized in law. It illustrates the …

“Heal Thyself.”—An Argument For Granting Asylum To Healthcare Workers Persecuted During The 2014 West African Ebola Crisis, Bethany Echols

SMU Law Review

This article argues for a change in United States asylum policy at a time when change is needed most. Those seeking asylum must prove that they fear persecution in their home country based on one of five protected categories and that their government is the persecutor or is unable to control the actions of the persecutors. Multiple articles have recognized that the “particular social group” is the most difficult category of asylum seeker to analyze. Not only do the standards for particular social groups (PSGs) vary among circuit courts, but judicial consistency is lacking.

This article focuses on a particular …