ALR Symposium Issue | Administrative Law in a Time of Crisis: Comparing National Responses to COVID-19

The Administrative Law Review recently published a fascinating symposium issue that presents a comparative look at responses to the Covid-19 pandemic around the globe (Vol. 73, No. 1, Winter 2021).

The issue is featured by a relevant lineup of scholars, including Cary Coglianese and Neysyn A. Mahboubi.

Their foreword specifies as the pandemic represents a worldwide historic crisis that will have deep and lasting long-term effects. Due to such circumstances, they state as scholars have found it necessary to discuss and write about its implications. This, in order to understand how to prevent future similar situations and the relevant effects.

They unfold as scholars and policymakers need to consider the role that administrative law values of openness, fairness and procedural regularity should play in such times of crisis and understand the relationship between administrative law and some factors (as leadership and risk communication) that affect governments’ ability to respond to public health crises.

The foreword represents as 1) global pandemic demands a coordinate global response and coordination must take place within each country as well (local and regional level); 2) regulatory law must be able to adapt quickly; 3) emergency powers need oversight and limitations and 4) how much law depends on responsible leadership for its effective design and implementation.

The intention of the issue is to encourage a scholar discussion around these key problems.

The authors underline how a global comparative administrative law project has been initiated in the spring of 2020 which generated a collection of short essays published in The Regulatory Review.

Following that, the ALR special issue deepens the attention with respect to China, Chile, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, United States, and the World Health Organization (WHO) through papers written by eminent scholars for each of these Countries.

The final ambition is that the lessons learned from the present crisis will lead to a positive swing of regulatory innovation and diffusion across jurisdictional boundaries.

Below a clickable list of the eight articles that compose the issue: