9 - Public health law

Summary

Introduction

The law's engagement with public health provides one of the earliest illustrations of the interface between health and legal regulation. The scourges of typhoid, cholera and the plague led to nation states introducing explicit legal regulation of such diseases. This took the form in many instances of draconian legislative restrictions upon personal freedom. References to the isolation of lepers are to be found in the Old Testament. Practices of quarantine can be traced back to 1000 and Venetian legislative statutes concerning plague quarantine relate to 1127. By the fourteenth century, overseers in Venice were authorised to spend public money for the purpose of quarantining persons, goods and ships on an island in the lagoon.

While, for centuries, detention was the response to perceived dangers to public health, over time, the law in some European countries began to be used to facilitate a more sophisticated response. Concerns regarding the spread of disease were linked to poor living conditions and inadequate sanitation. The revolution in public health in the UK, for example, was linked to the reforming zeal of Edwin Chadwick, who argued that the root cause of infectious disease could be found in poor sanitation. Through the reports of the Royal Commission on the Health of Towns established in 1843, the momentum developed for legislative amendment. In 1848, the UK passed the Public Health Act which, rather than the “reactive” quarantine practices, can be seen as one of the major steps towards “proactive” public health.