We’ve been hearing quite a bit about public health law this past year. To summarize, public health law is the study of how the law directs the actions of public health people to address public health issues. For example, when you work for the CDC, it’s public health law that’s guiding how you respond to the coronavirus pandemic.
To better understand public health law, we turned to the nation’s most thoughtful legal experts who teach at the nation’s top law schools to learn about where public health law came from and where it goes next.
One of the most visible legal areas has been intellectual property law. This type of law has garnered some attention in the news these past few months as health officials reported that pharmaceutical firms are illegally placing patents for vaccines and treatments on drugs which have been made as research and development tools for better products.
Another area has been Social Media Law, a law that includes the practice of how laws are applied to address cyber-bullying, online harassment, threats, shaming, offensiveness and deception. This is a very important topic to a wide range of communities.
Here is our rundown of current legal and regulatory areas covering the types of issues we hear about from readers and readers of WebMD Legal.