Covid-19 in Asia Law and Policy Contexts

This is a book for an extraordinary time, about a pandemic for which there is no modern precedent. It is an edited collection of original essays on Asia's legal and policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, which, in a matter of months, swept around the globe, infecting millions. It transformed daily life in almost every corner of the planet: lockdowns of cities and entire countries, physical distancing and quarantines, travel restrictions and border controls, movement-tracking technology, mandatory closures of all but essential services, economic devastation and mass unemployment, and government assistance programs on record-breaking scales. Yet a pandemic on this scale, under contemporary conditions of globalization, has left governments and their advisors scrambling to improvise solutions, often themselves unprecedented in modern times, such as the initial lockdown of Wuhan. This collection of essays analyzes law and policy responses across Asia, identifying cross-cutting themes and challenges. It taps the collective knowledge of an interdisciplinary team of sixty-one researchers both in the service of policy development, and with the goal of establishing a scholarly baseline for research after the storm has passed. The collection begins with an epidemiological overview and survey of the law and policy themes. The jurisdiction-specific case studies and cross-cutting thematic essays cover five topics: first wave containment measures; emergency powers; technology, science, and expertise; politics, religion, and governance; and economy, climate, and sustainability. Chapter 20. Cambodia: Public Health, Economic, and Political Dimensions by Ratana Ly, Vandanet Hing, & Kimsan Soy is available for free here: http://fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/academic/pdf/law/RamrajCO VID19AsiaCH20.pdf

Victor V. Ramraj a Professor of Law and Chair in Asia-Pacific Legal Relations at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. Since 2017, he has been the Director of the of the Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives. Earlier in his career, he spent sixteen years at the National University of Singapore, and served as a co-director of the Centre for Transnational Legal Studies in London in 2010-2011. His research interests span comparative constitutional law, transnational regulation, emergency powers, and the state-company relationship. He has edited and co-edited several collections of essays and his research has been published in leading journals around the world.