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Public-Private Health Law: Multiple Directions In Public Health, Nan D. Hunter

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

No public law is more public than public health law. Its defining subject is the use of state power to control and prevent death and disease. Its primary institutions are a cluster of state actors, the governmental agencies that comprise the American public health "system.,, The system grew out of the eighteenth century boards of health that produced the beginnings of administrative law. Public health law is grounded on statutory provisions that authorize various forms of state action and on judicial decisions that resolve constitutional challenges to those actions.