In designing this digital symposium, we sought to ensure broad comparability among a large number of contributions, without prescribing a script. We posed the same three questions to legal scholars from countries representing every region of the world:
In response to the novel Coronavirus, has your country adopted legal measures that restrict civil rights or undermine the democratic rule of law? If so, what form do these measures take?
What is the main regulatory vehicle used to enact these changes? Has the judiciary evaluated the legality of such measures?
Have these measures had, or are they likely to have, disproportionate impacts on certain groups, including women, disabled persons, minorities and/or marginalized and poor populations? Although “the public” is never monolithic, how would you characterize the overall reaction to these restrictions among the population? If there is political resistance or dissent, how is that being manifested?
However, we deliberately sought varied perspectives from legal scholars drawn not just from across the world but also from an array of fields — e.g., health law, constitutional law, specialists in disability and human rights. The complex challenges raised by the pandemic are not the province of any narrow field of expertise. Further, as is revealed in the contributions, these different perspectives at times produce distinct approaches to evaluating the legitimacy and impacts of state (in)actions, and distinct understandings of how willing we should be to accept measures in the interest of a broadly-construed social contract.
The effect of collecting these many diverse contributions — with all the limitations of the format — constitutes a shared basis for future dialogue. Indeed, we hope it provides one opening of many for an important set of discussions to have at this critical moment in time.
We will continually update this page with the responses we receive. Browse the full list of submissions below, or click on the interactive map above to read individual posts.
