Public Health Law in a Nutshell

Book excerpt: Public Health Law in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition (2016) provides a fascinating, informative, and concise assessment of the critical role of law in American society to protect the community's health. Updated to reflect modern developments through 2015 in this ever-developing field, the Nutshell's 10 chapters lay out definitive legal issues underlying core public health powers to prevent and control communicable and chronic conditions like influenza, obesity, cancer, and heart disease. The text also explores legal routes to address sources of other public health threats, including tobacco and alcohol use, guns, vehicles, and defective products. Additional chapters focused on information surveillance, commercial speech regulation, the built environment, and emergency preparedness provide concise clear assessments of difficult law and policy trade-offs. Understanding the field of public health law encompasses its constitutional sources and limits as well as historic and modern attempts to regulate in the interests of the community's health and safety. This Nutshell specifically explains and addresses these issues while also providing a modern framework supporting the role of law in this pivotal area of society. It is a "must read" for any legal or public health practitioner in the field, law- and policy-makers working to protect the public's health, as well as students in schools of law, public health, or medicine assessing these issues in prior or current coursework.