In an increasingly globalized world, many challenges to human health are beyond the capabilities of any individual state to effectively address. While there are relatively few sources of binding international law aimed directly at safeguarding human health, there are many norms, principles, standards, and organizations that play a role in this regard. There are also many branches of international law that impact human health, both positively and negatively. This complex interaction between law and global health forms the basis of the emerging field of global health law. Against this backdrop, Gian Luca Burci and Brigit Toebes have compiled the Research Handbook on Global Health Law to help clarify, conceptually and substantively, what global health law entails.^{Footnote 1}

The Research Handbook on Global Health Law is an edited collection with contributions from eighteen experts in global health law. The book is comprised of four parts. Part 1 provides a conceptual discussion of global health law and its definitional limits. Part 2 examines how health intersects with established branches of international law. Part 3 highlights specific global health challenges and international regulatory responses. Part 4 concludes by synthesizing the preceding parts to set the stage for future global health law scholarship and developments.

The authors are frank about the unsettled and emerging nature of “global health law” as a distinct field of law, acknowledging that “[they] are unable to definitively determine whether global health law deserves the label of an emerging or existing branch of international law.”^{Footnote 2} However, the unclear nature of global health law does not prevent them from providing a conceptual account of how this area should be defined and in identifying its components. The result is a nuanced and cohesive collection of work demonstrating the complexity of global health law in terms of how different branches of international law treat health as a normative value, the various hard and soft law instruments and norms that exist, and the specific regulatory challenges to human health that need to be grappled with at the global level.

Part 1, consisting of Chapters 1 and 2, begins by framing the concept of global health law. Toebes starts Chapter 1 by explaining its hard and soft law components and acknowledging the indeterminate nature of global health law as a branch of international law.^{Footnote 3} She explains the authors’ preference for the term “global health law” over the more traditional concept of “international health law,” recognizing the multiplicity of actors involved in the field and the many relevant health standards beyond those created or adopted by states and international organizations.^{Footnote 4} In Chapter 2, Suerie Moon defines “global health law” as encompassing “codified rule[s] (whether binding or non-binding) with the explicitly-stated intention to protect or promote health, endorsed by a governmental or intergovernmental entity, agreed to by three or more countries and with effects beyond a single region.”^{Footnote 5} This working definition appropriately frames the subsequent parts of the book, which examine specific areas of law and legal norms that may fall within its scope.

Each chapter in Part 2 then examines a specific branch of international law. Chapters 3 and 4 explore human rights law in the context of global health. John Tobin, in Chapter 3, explores the right to health and advocates for a rights-based approach to global health law.^{Footnote 6} In Chapter 4, Thérèse Murphy offers a critique of Lawrence Gostin’s seminal book, Global Health Law,^{Footnote 7} in terms of Gostin’s conception of the right to health and economic, social, and cultural rights more broadly.^{Footnote 8} These chapters complement each other well, with Tobin discussing the content of the right to health, and Murphy addressing the most common critiques of the right to health — namely, that it is imprecise and difficult to enforce.

Chapters 5, 6, and 7 discuss international trade law, intellectual property law, and international investment law, respectively.^{Footnote 9} These chapters examine whether the existing law in these fields sufficiently safeguards human health, the presumption being that health, as a normative value, may conflict with the values underlying these other legal regimes. In contrast, the discussions in Chapters 8 and 9 focus, respectively, on international environmental law and international humanitarian law, as legal regimes that are more closely aligned with the protection of human health, and, as such, provide the opportunity to identify existing norms and principles that may form part of global health law.^{Footnote 10}

Part 3, consisting of Chapters 10–15, builds on the foundation set in Part 2 by examining specific global health challenges and the regulatory tools available at the international level. While not comprehensive, the editors chose a solid array of notable issues and events that have been key in the development of global health law. This part is logically structured, demonstrating the chronology of major milestones and issues in global health law, starting with the treatment of communicable diseases under the more traditional branch of “international health law” (Chapter 10),^{Footnote 11} followed by the specific issues faced in the context of HIV/AIDS (Chapter 11),^{Footnote 12} and the use of international law to regulate tobacco sales (Chapter 12).^{Footnote 13} These chapters provide concrete examples of challenges that have prompted international regulatory responses and are followed by chapters on non-communicable disease prevention (Chapter 13),^{Footnote 14} obesity (Chapter 14),^{Footnote 15} and pharmaceutical standards (Chapter 15),^{Footnote 16} highlighting areas where effective legal regulation remains elusive.

This part of the book does an excellent job of situating global health law outside the boundaries of the specific legal branches addressed in Part 2 and exploring regulatory successes and challenges against the broader political, social, legal, and economic international landscape. For example, Stefania Negri explores how the United Nations Security Council has made resolutions about communicable diseases, treating health as a matter of international peace and security (Chapter 10);^{Footnote 17} Daniel Tarantola and Sofia Guskin consider the important role played by international organizations and non-governmental organizations in responding to the HIV/AIDS crisis and developing effective solutions (Chapter 11);^{Footnote 18} and Suzanne Zhou and Jonathan Liberman explore the unique nature of the regulatory response to tobacco use where the political will existed to create a binding convention (Chapter 12).^{Footnote 19} The remaining chapters in this part, being Chapters 13–15, similarly illustrate the range of challenges that exist in the global regulation of matters affecting human health.

Part 4 concludes with Burci adeptly tying the preceding parts together to highlight their interactions and contributions to the authors’ collective endeavour to “give[] a comprehensive overview of the most important components of global health law.”^{Footnote 20} As Burci notes, the contributions to the book “illustrate[] the complexity of the overall normative landscape characterized by a core of dedicated hard and soft instruments but more importantly by a diffusion of health as a normative value in a disparate range of other legal regimes.”^{Footnote 21} Burci provides a compelling analysis of factors identified as militating for and against the creation of new health treaties.^{Footnote 22} He then emphasizes the importance of soft law instruments in this area, highlighting their role in complementing and challenging binding legal norms.^{Footnote 23}

As the Research Handbook on Global Health Law covers a lot of ground, it will be of interest to a range of readers. Particularly as the field of global health law continues to evolve and grow, this book will serve as an excellent resource for those new to the field or those seeking a clearer understanding of what, exactly, global health law entails. Part 2, in particular, is easily accessible to those with limited knowledge of a particular branch of international law, as each chapter provides a solid overview of the law and insight into how health is treated in its respective area. This is where, as a research handbook, this work really shines. Each chapter serves as an excellent standalone resource for those interested in how health intersects with a particular field of international law. The similarity in terms of the structure of these chapters provides for cohesion and consistency that nicely ties this part of the book together. Murphy’s critique of Gostin^{Footnote 24} is a notable outlier in this regard but, nevertheless, adds valuable insight into ongoing debates over how to conceptualize, frame, and understand global health law and is representative of the unsettled nature of the field.

Part 3 provides an excellent source of information for those interested in the international regulation of specific health issues. These chapters provide valuable practical insight into how specific health-related challenges have been tackled and where there are ongoing obstacles to regulatory efforts. One of the benefits of this work being an edited collection is the carefully curated expertise of the authors in the areas of focus in their respective chapters. The authors have brought a wealth of experience to this project, which is clearly highlighted in this part of the book. The shortfall of this approach, however, is that there is considerable overlap between chapters within this part as well as between chapters from Parts 2 and 3. This is a relatively minor critique, as the benefit of this approach is that each standalone chapter provides a comprehensive picture for the reader. A bit more streamlining, however, would have been useful for those reading the book cover to cover.

A central argument advanced by this work is that health needs to be promoted and protected in international law and global governance mechanisms. A notably optimistic tone runs throughout most of the book in this regard, with Toebes and Burci expressing optimism at the state of growth of global health law and potential for it to be used to address the challenges to health brought about by an increasingly globalized world.^{Footnote 25} Benn McGrady and Ciara Giorgetti also take an optimistic stance in their respective chapters on international trade law and international investment law. In their view, bona fide health concerns are adequately protected by the legal systems embedded in these branches of law.^{Footnote 26} This optimism is challenged, to an extent, in Part 3, where the corporate interests and profits at stake in the regulation of health-related products (for example, tobacco, alcohol, and food) are acknowledged as potential challenges in these legal areas.^{Footnote 27} However, one of the themes of the book is about how lessons can be learned from past challenges to devise appropriate and effective solutions for the future. This message is solidified in Burci’s concluding chapter, which emphasizes the importance of focusing not only on sources of hard law in this field but also on the significant range of influential soft law instruments.

This book will likely serve as an important resource in this growing field. It sheds light on the current state of global health law, identifies the various norms and instruments the field encompasses, and illustrates how key events and issues have shaped the current landscape. Importantly, the book also provides direction for future scholarship and insight into potential future legal developments. Overall, it makes a compelling case for treating health as a normative value in the implementation of existing, and in the development of future, legal instruments.