Constitutional Contagion: COVID, the Courts, and Public Health (Zoom Program)

A Discussion for Judges with Professor Wendy E. Parmet

Moderated By District Court Judge Julie J. Bernard

*This is a Zoom program*

From the Publisher: Constitutional law has helped make Americans unhealthy. Drawing from law, history, political theory, and public health research, Constitutional Contagion explores the history of public health laws, the nature of liberty and individual rights, and the forces that make a nation more or less vulnerable to contagion. In this groundbreaking work, Wendy Parmet documents how the Supreme Court departed from past practice to stymie efforts to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic and demonstrates how pre-pandemic court decisions helped to shatter social contracts, weaken democracy, and perpetuate the inequities that made the United States especially vulnerable when COVID-19 struck. Looking at judicial decisions from an earlier era, Parmet argues that the Constitution does not compel the stark individualism and disregard of public health that is evident in contemporary constitutional law decisions. Parmet shows us why, if we are to be a healthy nation, constitutional law must change.

Wendy E. Parmet is the Matthews Distinguished Professor of Law and Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University, where she is also the faculty director of the Center for Health Policy & Law. Her research focuses on access to health care and the use of the law to protect public health. Professor Parmet has published articles on public health, bioethics, discrimination, health law and AIDS law.

Professor Parmet clerked with Chief Judge Levin H. Campbell of the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and practiced with a large law firm prior to joining the Northeastern faculty. She is the associate editor for law and ethics for the American Journal of Public Health. She previously served as a member of the boards of directors (and a past president of the board) of Health Law Advocates and Health Care for All and was a member of the ABA’s AIDS Coordinating Committee and Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Law.

In 1998, Professor Parmet acted as co-counsel in Bragdon v. Abbott, the first AIDS/HIV case to come before the US Supreme Court under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Professor Parmet’s client, Sidney Abbott, had been refused treatment by her dentist when she revealed her HIV-positive status, although she was asymptomatic. The high court said that because she was infected with HIV, she was entitled to the protections of the Americans with Disabilities Act. In 2012 Professor Parmet was lead counsel in Finch v. Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, in which the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court found that a state law denying state subsidized health insurance to legal immigrants was unconstitutional.

For more information, please visit: https://law.northeastern.edu/faculty/parmet/

A complimentary copy of Constitutional Contagion will be distributed in advance to the first 50 judges who register.