‘Someone call a global health lawyer!’: global health law as an emerging community of practice

Abstract

Despite the recent expansion of efforts to delineate the normative and institutional contours of global health law, relatively little has been said of the human agents shaping this young field. This article offers a first descriptive account of global health law as an emerging community of practice, composed of, among others, scholars and teachers, advisers, practitioners and advocates who engage international legal norms in an effort to influence global health. Given the potential sway this community holds over the making, interpretation and application of norms that have bearing on global public health, the article calls for a practice of reflexivity and an ethic of care by self-professed ‘global health lawyers’.