Vulnerable: The Law, Policy and Ethics of Covid-19 - Paperback

by Colleen M. Flood (Editor), Vanessa MacDonnell (Editor), Jane Philpott (Editor)

The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease known as COVID-19, has infected people in 212 countries so far and on every continent except Antarctica.

Vast changes to our home lives, social interactions, government functioning and relations between countries have swept the world in a few months and are difficult to hold in one's mind at one time. That is why a collaborative effort such as this edited, multidisciplinary collection is needed. This book confronts the vulnerabilities and interconnectedness made visible by the pandemic and its consequences, along with the legal, ethical and policy responses. These include vulnerabilities for people who have been harmed or will be harmed by the virus directly and those harmed by measures taken to slow its relentless march; vulnerabilities exposed in our institutions, governance and legal structures; and vulnerabilities in other countries and at the global level where persistent injustices harm us all.

Hopefully, COVID-19 will forces us to deeply reflect on how we govern and our policy priorities; to focus preparedness, precaution, and recovery to include all, not just some.

Published in English with some chapters in French.

Author Biography

Teresa Scassa (Contributor)
Teresa Scassa is the Canada Research Chair in Information Law and Policy and a Full Professor in the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section
at the University of Ottawa, where she is a member of the Centre for Law, Technology and Society. Her research addresses digital and data governance issues. She has written widely in the areas of privacy law, data governance, intellectual property law, law and technology, artificial intelligence, and smart cities. She is Co-Editor of the books AI and the Law in Canada (2021), Law and the Sharing Economy (2017), and The Future of Open Data (2022), and Co-Author of Digital Commerce in Canada (2020) and Canadian Intellectual Property Law (2022).

Anne Levesque (Contributor)
Anne Levesque is Associate Professor in the French Common Law Program at the University of Ottawa. Her research and her publications focus on human rights and public interest litigation. Anne has practiced in the areas of employment, human rights, and public interest law. She has worked with a wide range of equality seeking groups, legal clinics, and non-for-profit organisations on test case litigation, interventions, and law reform initiatives.

She studied history and political science before obtaining her law degree from the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law (French Common Law Program) in 2007, followed by a Master's degree in International Human Rights from Oxford University in 2016. She is one of the lawyers representing the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada pro bono in its human rights complaint leading to a landmark victory in 2016 that affirms the right to equality of over 165,000 First Nations children.

Ravi Malhotra (Contributor)
Ravi Malhotra is Full Professor in the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section at the University of Ottawa.

Vanessa Gruben (Contributor)
Vanessa Gruben B.Sc.H (Queen's), LL.B. (Ottawa), LL.M. (Columbia) is Vice Dean (Academic) and Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Common Law and a member of the Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics. She also leads the Ottawa Hub for Harm Reduction - a multidisciplinary forum for scholars and community organizations who work on innovative harm reduction strategies. She is also co-editor of the 5th edition of Canada's leading text on health law and policy in Canada, Canadian Health Law and Policy, co-edited with Joanna Erdman and Erin Nelson (LexisNexis, 2017). Professor Gruben teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Health Law and a seminar on Access to Health Care.

Sam Halabi (Contributor)
Sam Halabi is Professor at Georgetown University's School of Health, Director of the Center for Transformational Health Law, and Affiliate Researcher at the Center for Global Health Science and Security. He was previously Senior Associate VP for Health Policy and Ethics at Colorado State University as well as Professor and Director of the Center for Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship at the University of Missouri, where he received the Husch Blackwell Award for Distinguished Teaching. Halabi has authored 5 books and over 80 publications on topics such as vaccine deployment, public health ethics, data sharing, and emergency response.

Y. Y. Brandon Chen (Contributor)
Y. Y. Brandon Chen is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section at the University of Ottawa.