Law Commons^™

The Built Environment And Its Relationship To The Public's Health: The Legal Framework, Wendy Collins Perdue

Law Faculty Publications

Public health advocates can help shape the design of cities and suburbs in ways that improve public health, but to do so effectively they need to understand the legal framework. This article re- views the connection between public health and the built environment and then describes the legal pathways for improving the design of our built environment.

Public Health And The Built Environment: Historical, Empirical, And Theoretical Foundations For An Expanded Role, Wendy Collins Perdue, Lawrence O. Gostin, Lesley A. Stone

Law Faculty Publications

In 2000, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Environmental Health issued a report that explored some of the ways in which "sprawl" impacts public health. The report has generated great interest, and state health officials are beginning to discuss the relationship between land use and public health. The CDC report has also produced a backlash. For example, the Southern California Building Industry Association labeled the report "a ludicrous sham" and argued that the CDC should stick to "fighting physical diseases, not defending political ones."

In this environment, it is understandable if the CDC looks to such …

Blinded By Bioterrorism: Public Health And Liberty In The 21st Century, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

In Blindness, Nobel Prize laureate Jos6 Saramago chronicles the quarantining of the first victims of a plague of blindness.1 We meet many people who become blind in Saramago's novel, including an opthamologist, a one-eyed man with an eye patch, and a man born blind. Saramago reminds us that we are all blind in one way or another, and that there are many things about ourselves and our society that we can't or won't see. The quarantine itself turns out to be isolating, inhumane, and degrading; the interred blind being portrayed by themselves and others as pigs, dogs, and "lame crabs." …

Puppy Love: Bioterrorism, Civil Rights, And Public Health, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Florida has been the state humorists most like to make fun of since the 2000 presidential election, especially when it comes to politics. And humorists are almost the only commentators who can be counted on to tell us the truth about the state of American politics today. When Californians decided to recall their Governor, for example, Conan O'Brien observed: "Yesterday Arnold Schwarzenegger announced he would run for governor of California. The announcement was good news for Florida residents, who now live in the second-flakiest state in the country."' And when more than 200 people filed to run for Governor, Jay …

The Invention Of Health Law, Maxwell Gregg Bloche

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

By default, the courts are inventing health law. The law governing the American health system arises from an unruly mix of statutes, regulations, and judge-crafted doctrines conceived, in the main, without medical care in mind. Courts are ill-equipped to put order to this chaos, and until recently they have been disinclined to try. But political gridlock and popular ire over managed care have pushed them into the breach, and the Supreme Court has become a proactive health policy player. How might judges make sense of health law's disparate doctrinal strands? Scholars from diverse ideological starting points have converged toward a …