Public Health Law in a Nutshell, Third Edition (2017) provides a fascinating and informative assessment of the critical role of law in American society to protect the community's health. Understanding the field of public health law encompasses its constitutional sources and limits as well as historic and modern attempts to regulate in the interests of the community's health and safety. This Nutshell explains and addresses these issues within a modern framework supporting the role of law toward improve health outcomes. Modernized to reflect key developments through mid-2017, the Nutshell's 11 chapters and 130+ graphics, illustrations, and figures lay out definitive legal issues underlying core public health powers to prevent and control communicable and chronic conditions, as well as injuries and related deaths. It also explores legal routes to address sources of other public health threats, including tobacco and alcohol use, guns, vehicles, and defective products. Additional chapters focused on information surveillance, commercial speech regulation, the built environment, and emergency preparedness lay out difficult law and policy trade-offs. This Nutshell is a "must read" for legal or public health practitioners in the public health field, law- and policy-makers working to protect the public's health, and undergraduates and graduate students in schools of law, public health, or medicine assessing these issues as part of their coursework.
