Available From UC Press

Lawrence O. Gostin’s seminal Public Health Law is widely acclaimed as the definitive statement on public health law at the turn of the twenty-first century. In this bold third edition, Gostin is joined by Lindsay F. Wiley to analyze major health threats of our time such as chronic diseases, emerging infectious diseases, antimicrobial resistance, bioterrorism, natural disasters, opiod overdose, and gun violence. The authors draw on constitutional law, administrative law, local government law, and tort law to develop their conception of law as a tool for protecting the public’s health. 
 
The book creates an intellectual framework for modern public health law and supports that framework with illustrations of the scientific, political, and ethical issues involved. In proposing innovative solutions for the future of the public’s health, Gostin and Wiley’s essential study provides a blueprint for public and political debates to come.

New issues covered in this edition:

• Corporate personhood rights raised in response to regulations of tobacco, food and beverages, alcohol, firearms, prescription drugs, and marijuana.
• Local government authority to protect the public’s health.
• Deregulation and harm reduction as modes of public health law intervention.
• Taxation, spending, and alteration of the socioeconomic environment as modes of public health law intervention.
• Access to health care as a strategy for protecting the public’s health.
• Taxation, spending, licensing, zoning, and shared-use strategies for chronic disease prevention.
• The public health law perspective on violence and injury prevention.
• Health justice as a framework for reducing health disparities and protecting the public’s health.

Lawrence O. Gostin is University Professor, the Founding O’Neill Chair in Global Health Law, and Director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law and the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights at Georgetown University, and Professor of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University

Lindsay F. Wiley is Associate Professor at American University’s Washington College of Law. She serves on the Board of Directors of the American Society for Law, Medicine, and Ethics and on the National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists.

Thomas R. Frieden is the Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Acting Administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

“Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint does not disappoint. It presents not only a comprehensive overview of public health law but also a compelling case for why it is more vital than ever in our modern world.”—Margaret Hamburg, former U.S. Commissioner of Food and Drugs

“No one has done more than Lawrence Gostin to map the conceptual and practical issues that must be engaged to translate a vision of public health into workable principles and strategies. Since its first edition, Public Health Law has brought defining clarity and insight to the field. In this third edition, Gostin and Wiley together add to the texture, context, and guidance for securing the legal foundation of policies that will enhance our health futures.”—J. Michael McGinnis, MD, MPP, and Senior Scholar at the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies