UCL leads global project mapping legal responses to Covid-19

UCL is leading a vast international collaboration bringing together legal scholars across the world to understand and compare national legal responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. The project, titled Lex-Atlas: Covid-19 (LAC19) jointly led by UCL, Kings College London and the Max Planck Institute of Comparative Public Law and International Law, seeks to provide unprecedented analysis of legal responses to Covid-19 in over 60 countries representing a diversity of regions, income and inequality levels, legal systems and political regime-type. Each country report will address the legal framework, institutional performance, public health measures, social and labour policy, and measures relating to human rights and the protection of vulnerable groups. The reports will be updated across 2021 as the national responses to the pandemic evolve. LAC19, which is generously funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, will be a vital source of information for policymakers and political leaders to assess the effectiveness and propriety of responses to Covid-19 as well as to prepare for future global health emergencies. LAC19 is working with Oxford University Press to publish the first 22 country reports open-access in mid-February 2021. Ultimately, the research will result in over 60 comprehensive national reports, an online database, and a final report due to be finalised in the late-Autumn 2021.