The volume presents the reports and discussions held at the conference of the a oeAssociation of German Constitutional Law Teachersa in Freiburg from October 3rd to October 6th, 2007.

The recent pandemic has clarified the overwhelming connection between the workplace and technology. With thousands of employees suddenly forced to work at home, a large segment of the workforce quickly received crash courses in videoconferencing and other technologies, and society as a whole took a step back to redefine what employment actually means. The virtual workplace is the blending of brick-and-mortar physical places of business with the advanced technologies that now make it possible for workers to perform their duties outside of the office. Trying to regulate in this area requires the application of decades old employment laws to a context never even contemplated by the legislatures that wrote those rules. This book explores the emerging issues of virtual work-defining employment, litigating claims, aggregating cases, unionizing workers, and preventing harassment-and provides clarity to these areas, synthesizing the current case law, statutory rules, and academic literature to provide guidance to workers and companies operating in the technology sector.

A concise history of how American law has shaped-and been shaped by-the experience of contagion, "taking us from the smallpox outbreaks of the colonies to COVID-19. . . . The conclusion [Witt] arrives at is devastating." (Jennifer Szalai, New York Times)"One wishes that, six months ago, every member of Congress and the Trump administration had been forced to read and reckon with the history Witt neatly summarizes. But now in the aftermath of a close, bitterly fought election, let's hope that this book will help America chart its way forward."-Jill Filipovic, Washington Post From yellow fever to smallpox to polio to AIDS to COVID-19, epidemics have prompted Americans to make choices and answer questions about their basic values and their laws. In five concise chapters, historian John Fabian Witt traces the legal history of epidemics, showing how infectious disease has both shaped, and been shaped by, the law. Arguing that throughout American history legal approaches to public health have been liberal for some communities and authoritarian for others, Witt shows us how history's answers to the major questions brought up by previous epidemics help shape our answers today: What is the relationship between individual liberty and the common good? What is the role of the federal government, and what is the role of the states? Will long-standing traditions of government and law give way to the social imperatives of an epidemic? Will we let the inequities of our mixed tradition continue?

Why medicine adopts ineffective or harmful medical practices only to abandon them-sometimes too late. Medications such as Vioxx and procedures such as vertebroplasty for back pain are among the medical "advances" that turned out to be dangerous or useless. What Dr. Vinayak K. Prasad and Dr. Adam S. Cifu call medical reversal happens when doctors start using a medication, procedure, or diagnostic tool without a robust evidence base-and then stop using it when it is found not to help, or even to harm, patients. In Ending Medical Reversal, Drs. Prasad and Cifu narrate fascinating stories from every corner of medicine to explore why medical reversals occur, how they are harmful, and what can be done to avoid them. They explore the difference between medical innovations that improve care and those that only appear to be promising. They also outline a comprehensive plan to reform medical education, research funding and protocols, and the process for approving new drugs that will ensure that more of what gets done in doctors' offices and hospitals is truly effective.

What do seat belts, life jackets and anti-jack knife technology have in common? They were all the subjects of campaigns run by the British Safety Council since its inception in 1957. James Tye, its charismatic founder and leader for nearly 40 years, created the British Safety Council to bring about a transformation in how Great Britain viewed safety and health. In 1957, hundreds, if not thousands, of workers were killed in accidents and James marshalled every conceivable technique to save lives, including PR stunts, training, lobbying for better laws and, crucially, what he called 'propaganda', in the form of posters and other communication tools. In 2014, a long-lost collection of posters, papers and letters were found gathering dust in a warehouse. The British Safety Council, wanting to mark its 60-year history and its role in reducing deaths at work, decided to preserve the collection and commissioned historian Mike Esbester to trace the history of health and safety in Britain from the late 1960s through the posters and photographs of the time. Transformative Propaganda: Opening the Archives of the British Safety Council offers a fascinating and vivid insight into the social and political realities of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s through a wealth of historical documents, press cuttings, correspondence, photographs and posters. It offers a truly extraordinary window onto the evolution of health and safety within the UK and richly deserves a place on the bookshelf of every safety professional.

Food safety has become a major concern for consumers in the developed world and Europe in particular. This has been highlighted by the recent spate of food scares ranging from the BSE (mad cow) crisis to Chinese melamine contamination of baby formula. To ensure food safety throughout Europe, stringent food safety standards have been put in place 'from farm to fork'. At the same time, poor African countries in the COMESA rely on their food exports to the European market to achieve their development goals yet have difficulty meeting the EU food safety standards. This book examines the impact of EU food safety standards on food imports from COMESA countries. It also critically examines both EU and COMESA food safety standards in light of the WTO SPS Agreement and the jurisprudence of the WTO panels and Appellate Body. The book makes ground-breaking proposals on how the standards divide between the EU and the COMESA can be bridged and discusses the impact of EU food safety standards on food imports from poor African countries.

Principles and Practices of Aquatic Law presents the best practices and principles related to aquatic law and risk management. Its focus is injury and death occurring in aquatic environments including the ocean, pools, water parks, canals, rivers, lakes, dams, etc. It discusses the importance of aquatic risk management as it relates to aquatic accident prevention and the concept of duty and liability for a facility's management and staff. It also presents updated and relevant information about beach safety and the importance of hazard identification, warning, and elimination, and provides information for attorneys relating to the process of developing liability theories involving serious aquatic accidents and death. Features Presents a comprehensive resource on the applied practices and principles of aquatic law. Provides information for attorneys for the process of developing liability theories involving serious aquatic accidents and death. Presents updated and relevant information about beach safety and the importance of hazard identification, warning, and elimination. Discusses water-borne contaminants such as cryptosporidium and flesh-eating bacteria. Presents comprehensive public safety and beach management strategies: rip current prediction and monitoring, coastal engineering, drowning and rescue statistics, etc.

COVID-19 is probably the most significant global crisis of any of our lifetimes. The numbers involved have been stupefying, whether they speak of infection and mortality, the scale of public health measures such as mobility restrictions, or the economic consequences for unemployment and public sector spending. A significant amount of research has already been published on COVID-19, with a focus on its medical and epidemiological dimensions but also social science country reports and monitoring projects that are essentially descriptive. The objective of this book is to identify key threads in the global comparative discussion that continue to shed light on COVID-19 and shape debates about what it means for scholarship in health and comparative politics. The editors bring together over 30 authors versed in politics and the health issues in order to understand the health policy decisions, the public health interventions, the social policy decisions, their interactions, and the reasons. The book's coverage is global, with a wide range of key and exemplary countries, and contains a mixture of comparative, thematic, and templated country studies. All go beyond reporting and monitoring to develop explanations that draw on the authors' expertise while engaging in structured conversations across the book.