Covid-19, Law and Human Rights : Essex Dialogues. A Project of the School of Law and Human Rights Centre

Covid-19 presents one of the gravest, acute challenges our world has faced for many years. The pandemic impacts a vast array of areas of life across the globe. It also raises a multitude of very urgent questions for law and human rights. This volume provides a series of scholarly responses to many of the questions Covid-19 raises for the theory and practice of law and human rights. The assembled papers in this volume collectively seek to engage with academic and practitioner communities alike and the volume aims to positively contribute to our collective attempts to “build back better” once a globally available vaccine for Covid-19 has been produced and distributed. The volume emerged from a hastily convened Zoom meeting of over thirty colleagues based within the Human Rights Centre and the School of Law at the University of Essex. The purpose of the meeting was to gauge ongoing research related to Covid-19 and the breadth and array of responses led to this project. It quickly became apparent that many academic colleagues were extremely interested in contributing their expertise on a very broad range of multidisciplinary Covid-19 related topics and issues. The combination of contributors’ enthusiasm for the project and our editorial efforts has enabled us to produce this volume in a very timely manner. A mere three months has elapsed from the first meeting to the final publication! The contents of this volume span a very comprehensive range of topics, questions and expertise. The volume is purposefully multidisciplinary. It is also intended to be accessible to a relatively broad readership who, one imagines, is nevertheless united by an interest in the role which expertise has to play in confronting and overcoming the very many legal, social, philosophical and political challenges which Covid-19 entails.