This collection of essays presents a socio-legal history of epidemics from the medieval period to the present day.
Building on previous studies of infectious diseases undertaken by social historians of medicine, this collection explores the histories of epidemics and disease by looking at the legal measures deployed against them.
Whilst previous works have considered the mechanisms by which legal change occurs, the social and political assumptions on which new laws and new legal structures are premised and the social changes which follow,
this book focuses on the way in which historical actors understood law to be a complex means of responding to disease and the way in which that law shaped (and limited) the responses which could be made to disease.
Taking an interdisciplinary approach, it features contributions from scholars across a range of academic disciplines who consider the wider implications of epidemics and disease beyond the obvious health effects. The collection focuses first on regulatory responses such as the quarantine laws and border policies in the eighteenth century, the framing of ‘disease’ in the Colonial Immigration Acts in the nineteenth century and the ethics of public health in the twentieth century in Great Britain. It then goes on to consider developments in broader legal doctrine which themselves resulted from social and/or legal responses to disease, including the centralisation of labour regulation in the wake of the black death, property disputes about leper houses, pest houses and fever hospitals, and the prosecution of medical professionals for disease transmission in 19th century England.
Methodologically all the chapters are historical, but a range of approaches has been taken, from quite traditional doctrinal legal history through socio-legal history to traditional political and social history, to bring the history of epidemics and the legal measures deployed against them in to sharp focus.
Part 1: Introduction 1. Socio-Legal Histories of Infectious Disease, Emily Gordon (University College London, UK), Charles Mitchell (University College London, UK) and Ian Williams (University College London, UK) Part 2: Regulatory Responses 2. Legal Responses to the Plague in Early 17th-Century London, Joe Sampson (University of Cambridge, UK) 3. Epidemics, Quarantine Law, and Border Policy, 1780-1850, Alex Chase-Levenson (Binghamton University, USA) 4. Revisiting “Disease” in Colonial Immigration Acts, c 1880-1930, Alison Bashford (University of New South Wales, Australia) 5. Old Laws, New Treatments? Responding to Dis-ease at the UK Border, Roberta Bivins (Warwick University, UK) 6. On the Limits of the Law: Official Authority, Public Trust and the Prevention of Infectious Diseases in Britain, c 1850–1910, Tom Crook (Oxford Brookes University, UK) 7. The Taxation of Proprietary Medicines and the Regulation of Poisons in 19th-Century Britain, Chantal Stebbings (University of Exeter, UK) 8. Ethics and 20th-Century Public Health Law in Britain, Janet Weston (the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK) Part 3: Developments in Broader Legal Doctrine 9. Centralisation of Labour Regulation in Response to the Black Death: The Statute of Labourers and Contract Law, Lorren Eldridge (University of Edinburgh, UK) 10. Property Disputes about Leper Houses, Pest Houses and Fever Hospitals, Charles Mitchell (University College London, UK) and Jonathan Garton (University of Warwick, UK) 11. Private Offence, Public Wrong: Prosecuting Disease Transmission by Medical Professionals in 19th-Century England, Katherine D Watson (Oxford Brookes University, UK)
Emily Gordon is Lecturer in Law at University College London, UK. Charles Mitchell is Professor of Law at University College London, UK. Ian Williams is Associate Professor of Law at University College London, UK.
