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Foreword
Special Edition: “Building the Field of Public Health Law – Perspectives from
the Network for Public Health Law”
This Annals of Health Law Special Edition brings together faculty and students
from the Beazley Institute for Health Law and Policy at the Loyola University Chicago
School of Law and the Public Health Law and Policy Program at the Sandra Day
O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University to highlight the work of the
Network for Public Health Law. The Network is a national initiative of the Robert Wood
Johnson Foundation to provide insightful legal guidance, helpful resources, and
opportunities to build connections for organizations and individuals committed to using
law to improve public health. This includes local, tribal, state and federal officials;
public health practitioners; public and private attorneys; policy-makers; and advocates,
among others.
In this Special Edition, authors from the Network and key partners address current
and significant issues across the field of public health law. The range and diversity of
topics addressed reflect the breadth of challenges at the intersection of law and the
public’s health. The problems they address cross jurisdictional borders and impact the
public’s health. Resolving these problems requires vision and collaboration cognizant of
the complex system of legal, ethical, political, cultural, and practical considerations
facing public health. Authors in this Special Edition offer carefully considered, targeted
assessments and solutions to these considerable challenges.
This issue begins with Flipping the Light Switch: New Perspectives on Default to
Donation for Organs and Tissues, in which authors Daniel G. Orenstein and Layne
Bettini add to the discussion of consent models for cadaveric donation with an argument
in favor of default to donation (or “presumed consent”) on the basis of ocular and tissue
donation impact, donor family well-being, and public health ethics. Next, The Legal
Anatomy of Product Bans to Protect the Public’s Health, by James G. Hodge, Jr. and
Megan Scanlon, examines what they call the “legal anatomy” for identifying and
implementing effective bans on commercial products and services with significant health
risks in light of public health authority and countervailing law, policy, and ethics
arguments.
In The Expansion of Newborn Screening: Implications for Public Health and
Policy, Leila Barraza and Lauren Burkhart consider newborn screening programs and
their future in the era of whole genome sequencing, examining potential disease
prevention and health promotion benefits as well as potential ethical, legal, and policy
obstacles. ACA Implementation: The Court Challenges Continue, by Jane Perkins and
Dipti Singh, provides an overview and critical updates on litigation surrounding the
federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), analyzing numerous legal
challenges from initial repeal-oriented litigation, to subsequent attempts to curtail
contraception coverage requirements, to emerging efforts to enforce ACA provisions.
Monitoring the Law: Court Watch Programs in Maryland, by Megan Griest,
addresses domestic violence through the lens of public health, critiquing existing criminal
justice approaches in Maryland and examining potential improvements via programs that
train volunteers to observe and record judicial behavior and recommend best practices for
