Thread by @prof_goldberg

I've found it profitable to trade on a distinction between what I've termed "operational" vs. "structural" #PHLaw #PublicHealthLaw

One task public health lawyers can perform is helping public health officials understand the full scope of their legal authority.

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This task is critically important to functional public health governance, esp. b/c the scope of this authority has changed rather dramatically in the US since the Palpatine began.

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We might term this work "operational public health law," since it is focused on operative provisions of public health law that govern the scope of (at least) state action. It can illuminate what interventions public health officials can "operationalize."

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However critical operational public health law work is, and it is critical, we cannot permit it to exhaust the field itself, because then we have essentially doomed ourselves to simply replicating the status quo.

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In other words, we need to do more with and through public health law than explicating what the law *is* and defining the scope of the boundaries of legal and public health governance authority.

If this is all we do, we fail to conceive of what ought to be.

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We let what we CAN do define the scope of what we OUGHT to do, which basically perpetuates the naturalistic fallacy and virtually ensures we will never move beyond current perceived limitations.

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Thus, we also need to spend some time & effort thinking about what can be termed "structural public health law." Here we consider what structures does current public health law advance/stymie? Do these structures improve overall population health AND compress inequities?

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Moreover, what is the structure of the public health laws we do and don't have? Are they sufficient to advance social and/or health justice? If not, what laws need to be changed? What laws need to be implemented? What laws need to be enacted?

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Hopefully, it's obvious that this Dx btw "operational" and "structural" public health law explicitly demands we engage in normative inquiry. We don't necessarily have to engage deep ethical quandaries just to practice public health law;

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But if we do not exercise our moral faculties, if we do not integrate public health ethics into public health law, we may fail to see the inadequacies of current legal structures and fail to conceive of legal and policy remedies.

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tl;dr:

We need to integrate normative #PHEthx into #PHLaw. The latter without the former runs the risk of a rather blunt and positivistic implement for preserving the unjust status quo.

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#PHLaw #PublicHealthLaw #PHEthx #PublicHealthEthics #Bioethics #PublicHealthPolicy #PolicyStudies #EthicsOfHealthPolicy #HealthLawRocks #HealthLaw #ScholarTeacher

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