254700 Current Models of Public Health Jurisprudence and Moving Forward: An Initial Framework

Tuesday, October 30, 2012 : 5:15 PM - 5:30 PM

Jason A. Smith, MTS, JD , Division of Medical Humanities, Health Law & Ethics, University of Connecticut School of Medicine, Farmington, CT
Derek Parfit has been and remained a highly influential philosopher focusing on problems of personal identity and rationality. His work has, so far, been influential, and sometimes controversial, in the law in areas of environmental law and climate change; reproductive technology; and various complex jurisprudential and ethical problems in clinical medical ethics. However, his work has not been applied generally to problems in public health law and ethics. A primary concern of public health law and ethics is balancing the need to protect the individual against the need to protect the population's health. This area has been taken up by several scholars in the field relying primarily on extant frameworks in bioethics or purely legal frameworks not connected to ethics expressly. There currently exists no coherent jurisprudential approach to this problem. This paper will outline Derek Parfit's work generally and will outline concepts that are particularly relevant to solve this persistent problem in public health law and ethics. The paper will then contrast and compare this approach to existing work in the field offering a path forward for a more coherent and unified jurisprudential model for public health law.

Learning Areas:
Ethics, professional and legal requirements
Public health or related laws, regulations, standards, or guidelines

Learning Objectives:
1. Discuss the current state of public health jurisprudence. 2. Discuss Derek Parfit's work generally. 3. Discuss a framework for moving work in public health jurisprudence forward.

Keywords: Health Law, Theory

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I wrote the paper that is being presented and did the research and am an expert in this field.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.