Epidemics and the Law from Plague to the Present

Edited by Emily Gordon, Charles Mitchell and Ian Williams

Emily Gordon is Lecturer in Law at University College London, UK.
Charles Mitchell is Professor of Law at University College London, UK.
Ian Williams is Associate Professor of Law at University College London, UK.

This collection presents a socio-legal history of epidemics from the medieval period to the present day.

It focuses first on regulatory responses such as the quarantine laws in the eighteenth century, the framing of ‘disease’ in the Colonial Immigration Acts in the nineteenth century and the ethics of public health in the twentieth century in Great Britain.

It then goes on to consider developments in broader legal doctrine which includes the centralisation of labour regulation in the wake of the black death, property disputes about leper houses, pest houses and fever hospitals, and the prosecution of medical professionals for disease transmission.

Emily Gordon is Lecturer in Law at University College London, UK.

Charles Mitchell is Professor of Law at University College London, UK.

Ian Williams is Associate Professor of Law at University College London, UK.

Sep 2025   |   9781509984442   |   280pp   |   Hbk   |  RRP: £95

Discount Price: £76

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