Cultural Influences on Pandemic Policies

Summary of the major arguments .

Legal and policy responses cannot be seen in isolation from non-legal contexts as there is a close connection between legal responses and politics, public health policy, economics, and religion, to name a few prominent factors that may impact law and policy making during the time of the pandemic. There is therefore, a cultural perspective that can help inform the law and policy making contexts of the state. As there is a cultural perspective involved, it can be argued that one state’s cultural perspective may lead to legal and policy measures in response to Covid 19 that are different from the others. It is in this context that this work seeks to use a comparative approach to understand the legal responses to Covid 19 in England and Ireland and how these are influenced by politics, economics, public health policy, and religion.

Supportive Key Sources.

There are three sources that I have identified for the culturalist argument.

The first is Legrand’s ‘What is that to read Foreign law?’. In this article, Legrand writes about how a comparatist approaches reading of the foreign law text because in such reading of the text, it is likely that the comparatist will be influenced to some extent by their cultural contexts as well which leads to the contextual reading of the foreign law.

The second source is Legrand’s ‘Comparative legal studies and the Matter of Authenticity. In this article, Legrand argues that despite involving themselves in a comparatist framework for viewing foreign laws, comparatists often desire to wish away the differences between the laws that they know (i.e. of their own state) and the foreign law.

The third source is Legrand’s ‘Siting of foreign law : How Derrida can Help’. In this article, an important argument is made which is that for a comparatist, “foreign law could hold a significant and indeed crucial measure of normative purchase for judges and lawyers operating locally.” Indeed, one of the motivations for a research of this kind (the legal responses of England and Ireland to Covid 19) is to locate if any useful ideas that may be found in the foreign law and emulated or adapted in the local law.

There are three sources selected for understanding the legal responses in England and Ireland.

The first source is a public policy report by the COVID-19 Law and Human Rights Observatory1 of Trinity College Dublin. The report highlights the major legal and policy responses in the area of rental housing, mortgage and repossession, employment disputes, pandemic unemployment payment and benefits, and business insurance in Ireland. The report examines how individuals and businesses have been supported and protected in the time of Covid 19 with legal and policy measures being made to give protection to people in their homes and workplaces. This report also covers some of the social protection supports for unemployed and people without jobs.

The second source is the Joint Committee of Human Rights report entitled ‘The Government’s response to COVID-19: human rights implications’. In this report, the discussion on the laws prior to the pandemic, which are Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 and related secondary legislation; and the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 can be found as well as the Coronavirus Act 2020 which was passed after the pandemic.

The third source is the Bonavero Report. This report is useful because it analyses the legal responses of 11 jurisdictions including the UK. In essence it is a comparatist work and for that reason is included here.

Summary of the issues related to the topic.

The first issue is whether the legal responses in England and Ireland are similar in some ways and different in others. The focus here is to understand in a comparative manner the different measures that have been taken by the governments in these two countries.

The second issue relates to whether the differences or similarities in the approaches taken by the English and Irish jurisdictions can be explained in the context of the culturalist approach or in other words whether culturalist approach can help us to understand legal responses in two different jurisdictions.

The third issue relates to whether the English responses and Irish responses can be situated specifically to any political, religious, or economic local factors.

Relevant examples for initial arguments

In England, a specific legislation was enacted by the Parliament, the Coronavirus Act 2020. Similarly, in Ireland a law was passed, which is Health (Preservation and Protection and Other Emergency Measures in the Public Interest) Act 2020. It would be interesting to see how similar or dissimilar the provisions are. For example, the Irish law allows detention under the Act. Similar provision is not found in the English law.

Conclusion

My essay will be divided into four parts. The first part will be a discussion on the comparative research in order to give a background and context to this research. The second part will discuss the laws and measures in the two countries as responses to Covid 19. The third part will take on a comparatist approach to discuss the cultural approaches that may be involved in the making of the laws and measures. The fourth part will be the conclusion of the work.

bibliography

Ahern D and Roy S, Law And Policy Responses To Covid-19 In Ireland: Supporting Individuals, Communities, Businesses, And The Economy (School of Law, Trinity College Dublin 2020)

Legrand P, ‘Comparative legal studies and the Matter of Authenticity’ (2006) 1 Journal of Comparative Law 365.

Legrand P, ‘Siting of foreign law : How Derrida can Help’ (2011) 21 Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law 595 .

Legrand P, ‘What is that to read Foreign law?’ (2019) 14 Journal of Comparative Law 290.

Civil Contingencies Act 2004

Health (Preservation and Protection and Other Emergency Measures in the Public Interest) Act 2020