COVID19 litigation: the role of national and international courts in global health crisis

The book presents some of the main outcomes of the COVID-19 Litigation Project, an international project, coordinated by the University of Trento supported by the World Health Organisation and with the participation of eight academic partners in all continents. Based on a unique set of more than 2400 decisions in more than 80 countries around the world, selected and examined in a publicly available Database and News Page (https://www.covid19litigation.org/), the book is aimed to present a comparative analysis of the different judicial approaches all over the world in balancing the need to reduce contagion and to mitigate its consequences with the safeguard of fundamental rights and freedoms. Including contributions by legal scholars and judges of national and supranational courts from different jurisdictions and with different legal traditions, the book discusses the different role played by general principles in judicial review and liability cases across countries, the relevance of the emergency context as a driver for changes possibly due to remain after the pandemic, the relationship between legal principles and science in judicial decision-making, and the possible impact of judicial review on policy making in the field of global health crisis with a view to a high protection of fundamental rights and the rule of law.