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American Contagions: Epidemics and the Law from Smallpox to COVID-19
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19/99
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28/99
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87/99
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15/99
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About This Book
A concise history of how American law has shaped--and been shaped by--the experience of contagion, taking us from the smallpox outbreaks of the colonies to COVID-19. . . . The conclusion [Witt] arrives at is devastating. --Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times From yellow fever to smallpox to polio to AIDS to COVID-19, epidemics have prompted Americans to make choices and answer questions about their basic values and their laws. In five concise chapters, historian John Fabian Witt traces the legal history of epidemics, showing how infectious disease has both shaped, and been shaped by, the law. Arguing that throughout American history legal approaches to public health have been liberal for some communities and authoritarian for others, Witt shows us how history's answers to the major questions brought up by previous epidemics help shape our answers today: What is the relationship between individual liberty and the common good? What is the role of the federal government, and what is the role of the states? Will long-standing traditions of government and law give way to the social imperatives of an epidemic? Will we let the inequities of our mixed tradition continue?
Reviews
"Witt criticizes the 'hyper-partisanship' of today's controversies—symptoms of which, in his analysis, seem to present only among Republicans ..."
"In a book that's both timely, considering the pandemic, and remarkably speedy, considering that it began as a spring 2020 Yale Law School class, Bancroft Prize winner Witt looks at the sometimes contending, sometimes cooperating forces of public interest and private liberty in times of epidemic disease ..."
"There's something to be said for a book that takes the bewildering cacophony of American approaches to the pandemic and tries to bring some clarity to how we got here ..."
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