Introduction

Abstract

Abstract This introduction, “Foundations of Global Health Law & Policy,” provides an overview of the field of global health law, exploring its major doctrinal boundaries and its enduring controversies. Law and policy are complementary approaches to global health governance, with the aim of promoting a healthier, more equitable world. Global health law has come to encompass both “hard” law treaties that bind states and “soft” law instruments that shape norms, processes, and institutions to realize the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health throughout the world. With the practice of global health law proving highly influential in international law and public health contexts, global health law has become an independent academic field. The academic discipline of global health law has thus become a basis to describe new legal and policy frameworks that apply to the new set of public health threats, non-state actors, and regulatory instruments that structure global health. Global health law and policy now reflect the changing global landscape, architecture, and governance necessary to respond to the health threats of the 21st century.