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Health Law and Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2025

Wendy K. Mariner*
Affiliation:
Boston University School of Law and Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA
*

Abstract

Current political divisions are destabilizing existing laws affecting the health field. Major changes in the field of health law have one thing in common: changes in who holds political power ‒ Congress and state legislatures, governors, presidents, judges, and agency officials. The laws that structure financial, economic, educational, and health care systems, environmental conditions, and civil society are primarily the product of elections that populate our political institutions. These structural determinants of health in turn create laws that influence how ‒ and how well ‒ we live and whether our society functions fairly under the rule of law. Thus, who gets elected matters a great deal to the health and safety of Americans. At the same time, changes in health laws resulting from elections may reveal shifts in the structures underlying our legal and economic systems and whether those shifts support or weaken principles of justice and the rule of law.

Information

Type
Articles
Copyright
© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics and Trustees of Boston University

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