The Evolution of Global Health Law

This chapter provides an overview of the field of global public health law. It examines the historical origins of the field and the contribution that globalization has made to its contemporary evolution. The negative and disproportionate impacts of globalization on human health and well-being not only have expanded the ambit of global health law to accommodate new kinds of transnational health risks, but also, and relatedly, have disrupted conceptual waters in ways that appear to have placed the global community on the brink of a sea change in thinking about global health law. More specifically, the stark and transparent social and economic injustices wrought by globalization are slowly but steadily expanding the community of interest in support of a framework for advancing global health equity. As a result, a norm requiring the equitable protection and promotion of global health appears to be emerging as a moral force in contemporary global health policy discourse. If properly channeled, this emerging norm could be used in the future to advance the development of a global legal framework for health equity.

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