The boundaries and goals of legal scholarship within health of the public research

Abstract

This article explains, maps, and critically explores the tasks and aims of legal scholarship within, to use the phrase of the Academy of Medical Sciences, transdisciplinary ‘health of the public’ research. It does so with a view to explaining what legal scholarship can bring to, and also how it may be shaped by, such research. The article considers developments in understandings and focus of public health law scholarship, especially as these have gained renewed force with The Lancet–O’Neill Commission on the legal determinants of health. It presents roles for legal analysis in relation to questions of law as a practice, as well as a discipline that works through social sciences and humanities methods and approaches. In evaluating legal scholarship’s place within health of the public research, the article leads to an argument that greater attention should be given to the incorporation of questions concerning values and social justice. These are important – and more widely acknowledged – issues, and ones that are key to the rigour of research agendas that aim directly to promote goals of creating healthier, fairer societies.