Public Health law
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The branch of law that focuses on legal issues in public health practice and on the public health effects of legal practice. Public health law typically has three major areas of practice: police power, disease and injury prevention, and the law of populations.
Police Power
This area of public health law concentrates on the authority and power of governmental public health authorities. The law of police power deals with quarantine, control of infectious disease, licensing, inspection, post-harvest food security, and, recently, bioterrorism. In the United States, police power is exercised primarily at the state level. Public health lawyers working in this area typically are employed by governmental agencies. Bioterrorism is a growing focus of this practice area, and public health lawyers have worked in the creation of the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act and the Model State Public Health Act.
Disease and Injury Prevention
This broader area of public health law applies legal tools to public health problems associated with non-communicable diseases and injury. Practitioners apply legislation, regulation, litigation (private enforcement), and international law to public health problems using the law as an insturment of public health. Litigation against tobacco companies in the United States provides an excellent example.
Law of Populations
Population-based legal analysis is the theoretical foundation of public health law. The law of populations is a relatively new theoretical framework in jurisprudence that seeks to analyze legal problems using the tools of epidemiology. Population-based legal analysis can be applied to traditional public health problems but also has application in environmental law, zoning, evidence, and complex tort.