1. Teaching Public Health Law
Edward P. Richards
Director, Program in Law, Science, and Public Health
Harvey A. Peltier Professor of Law
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, LA

2. What is Public Health Law?
The Lumpers and the Splitters

3. Traditional Public Health
Public Health Law as Practiced in 1950
Communicable Disease Control
Sanitation
Clean Water
Nuisance

4. Public Health as a Theory of Everything
The American Public Health Association Defines Public Health as Everything that Affects Personal and Community Wellbeing
Wraps Everything into Public Health
Personal Health Services
Civil Liberties
Sustainable Development

5. Why Does It Matter?

6. Traditional Public Health is Police Power
Well Understood State Powers
Flexible Response to Emergencies
Administrative Law Rules
Consistent Jurisprudence Back to the Colonial Period

7. Public Health as Everything
Tries to Have a Consistent Model for Different Jurisprudential Classes
SARS and TB are Different from Smoking
Personal Health Services are Very Different from Communicable Disease Control
Community Empowerment is not Police Power

8. Why is This Bad?
At Least Until 9/11, Individual Liberties Claims Were Used to Undermine Traditional Public Health Authority
Constant Argument from Academics that Old Public Health Laws were Unconstitutional Because They Did Not Fit Every Situation in the New Public Health

9. Perverse Effects
Used to Argue Against Effective HIV Control Measures, Thus Devastating Urban Poor and Minority Communities
Used to Convince Legislatures to Weaken Traditional Disease Control Laws
Many of the Problems Allegedly Addressed by the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act were Caused by Same Folks Who Wrote the Model Act!

10. What is Wrong with the MSEHPA?
Flexibility
It is much too detailed
Consistency
It ignores the entire matrix of related state laws
Integration
Crisis management must be an extension of day-to-day practices, not a special set of laws that sit on the shelf

11. Public Health Law is Administrative Law
The Model Act, and Most Public Health Law Teaching Ignores this Basic Premise

12. State Administrative Law
Public Health Law is State Administrative Law
State Adlaw is Different from Federal Adlaw
It is Seldom Taught, but is Critical to Understanding Public Health
Public Health is the Perfect Way to Teach State Administrative Law