A significant component of Australia’s legal response to COVID-19 has been to give extensive powers to State and Territory governments to manage the crisis. At times these measures, such as quarantine arrangements, border controls, lockdowns, curfews and face masks, have been controversial, both legally and within the general community.
A new book called Pandemics, Public Health Emergencies and Government Powers: Perspectives on Australian Law explores the ways in which Australia’s laws, regulations and law-makers have engaged with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Edited by Belinda Bennett and Ian Freckelton, the book is a collection of thorough evaluations by leading scholars of the Australian response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pandemics, Public Health Emergencies and Government Powers: Perspectives on Australian Law is available now from Federation Press.
About Belinda Bennett
Belinda Bennett is Professor of Health Law and New Technologies in the School of Law. Her research addresses contemporary challenges for law in regulating new technologies in health care and in responding to public health emergencies.
Belinda is a member of the Australian Centre for Health Law Research (ACHLR) at QUT and leads ACHLR’s Technology, Innovation and Health theme.
You can read more about Belinda in her staff profile.
About Ian Freckelton
Ian Freckelton is a Queen’s Counsel in full-time practice as a barrister throughout Australia and a judge of the Supreme Court of Nauru. He regularly appears in the Queensland Court of Appeal. He is a Professorial Fellow of Law and Psychiatry at the University of Melbourne, an Adjunct Professor of Forensic Medicine at Monash University and an Adjunct Professor in the Australian Centre for Health Law Research at QUT.
Ian is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law, the Academy of Social Sciences Australia and the Australasian College of Legal Medicine. He is also the Editor of the Journal of Law and Medicine and the Founding Editor of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law. He is the author of over 40 books and more than 700 articles and chapters of books on many subjects, including medical law, mental health law, evidence law, tort law, administrative law and criminal law.
In the 2021 Queen’s Birthday Honours List, Ian was named an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for services to law and the legal profession across fields including health, medicine and technology.
You can read more about Ian at: https://ianfreckelton.com.au/
