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1 - Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 December 2022

Seema Mohapatra
Affiliation:
SMU Dedman School of Law, Texas
Lindsay Wiley
Affiliation:
UCLA School of Law, California
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Summary

As a distinct field of study and practice, health law is still relatively new, and its boundaries continue to be contested. As recently as 2006, Einer Elhague questioned whether health law could “become a coherent field of law.”1 The fact that Elhague’s musings appeared in a symposium dedicated to the idea that the “once vibrant … and fresh” subject of health law was haunted by a “specter of exhaustion” indicates the contested nature of the “field-ness” of this field.2 Its boundaries are even more hotly disputed. Is health law limited to the relationships among health care professionals, patients, the institutions where they meet, and the payers who finance their encounters? Or does it also encompass legal issues related to public health and the social determinants of health, which social epidemiology demonstrates3 play an even greater role than health care in shaping outcomes?4 As feminist health law scholars, we “view health law as an inherently … expansive field.”5 For the purposes of this volume, however, and in light of the potential for other areas – such as poverty law, housing law, and employment law – to generate Feminist Judgments books of their own, we have narrowed our focus to more traditional health law topics. Nonetheless, we view the insights of social epidemiology regarding the influence of social, economic, and environmental factors on health as “an invitation to engage with the rich literature of critical legal theories that view law as an expression of social power.”6

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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