Realizing the Right to Health Through Litigation: Reading Group
Full Year term, Block J
W 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Professor Lucie E. White with Mindy Roseman and Alicia Yamin
1 classroom credit LAW-45547A
This reading group will focus on the right to health as defined through international human rights instruments and constitutionalized through various national constitutions. Specifically, we will explore litigation as a strategy for realizing the right to health. We will read well-known and cutting edge cases and commentary, as well as discuss the direct and indirect impacts of litigation.
Over the past fifteen years there has been a surge in the number of cases in which courts have enforced claims to health goods and services. Emerging largely in the context of HIV/AIDS, courts in a number of countries have enforced issues such as access to health services and essential medications, and have made important rulings regarding various aspects of public health. Litigants seek to hold the government accountable for health right obligations (often by redirecting spending), but to what extent do they succeed? By what standard(s) do we measure success? And, who has benefited most from the judgments by the courts? The reading group will meet in seven sessions. One session will be devoted to definitional and conceptual issues, the others will cover cases from South Africa, Colombia, Argentina, India, England, Canada and possibly other jurisdictions. The cases will be discussed not only on their doctrinal merits, but placed in their wider contexts (e.g. historical contingencies, social movements, human rights advocacy, policy dimensions). Additionally we will consider how these cases connect to theories of public law and human rights litigation (in particular economic, social and cultural rights).