Public Health Crisis Management and Criminal Liability of Governments: A Comparative Study of the Covid-19 Pandemic

This book addresses potential avenues of criminal liability for public health crisis management in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, under national and international criminal law, especially for causing death and bodily harm. The national case studies are geographically representative and follow a common research grid. Each national case study is prefaced by an overview of the detection and subsequent spread of the pandemic in the country concerned. The relevant legal and constitutional frameworks that governed the government and corporate conduct in the face of the pandemic are also discussed, followed by the consideration of forms of criminal liability. Government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic differed vastly in terms of both the choice of strategies adopted (herd immunity, test-and-trace, lockdown, etc) and the quality and speed of government implementation of those strategies and associated interventions. Both factors impacted the number of infections and casualties. It is therefore appropriate to consider forms of criminal liability for failure of individual members of government, including specific public authorities, to act to the best of their abilities, as timely as possible, and in accordance with expert advice.

Michael Bohlander is Chair in Global Law and SETI Policy at Durham Law School, UK.
Gerhard Kemp is Professor of Criminal Law at UWE Bristol Law School, UK, and Extraordinary Professor in Public Law at Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
Mark Webster is an international criminal law practitioner and a Scottish qualified solicitor.