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Editors’ Introduction to The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Health Law

This introductory chapter provides an overview of The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Health Law. Why compare health laws? Situated at the interfaces between human rights, dignity, autonomy, and solidarity, and between multinational business activity, state regulation, and the most private of individual decision-making, health law is perhaps unique in its capacity to provoke a range of responses to how law should constrain and facilitate human activity. Scholars, legislators, and judges grappling with critical questions—such as how to finance healthcare, how to regulate the pharmaceutical industry, and how to protect against threats to public health that can quickly cross national borders—can learn from the successes and failures of the different approaches taken in different countries. The chapter then outlines the scope of the Handbook, which brings together the existing and emerging body of research in health law, with a key focus on the United States–European comparative perspective.