Public health, internal borders, and the ends of federalism
Public health, internal borders, and the ends of federalism
Questions concerning border closures during pandemics often focus on international borders or rights-based considerations. Closures of internal border in federal countries, like Canada, raise independent concerns regarding who can close internal borders when. Those questions are not exhausted by rights-based considerations and cannot be resolved using brute empirical measures. They instead implicate the nature and ends of federalism. This text uses the case of internal border restrictions in Canada during COVID-19 to explore whether the kinds of closures there can be justified on federalism grounds. It argues that the case for provinces being able to unilateral enact interprovincial border closures in federal countries, as observed in Canada during COVID-19, do not withstand scrutiny. It attends to possible justifications for federalism to demonstrate that the best arguments for federalism do not support provincial control over borders that justify provinces possessing, let alone exercising, unilateral authority to close interprovincial borders to country-persons.
Borders, COVID-19, Constitutional Law, Constitutional Theory, Federalism, Intergovernmental Relations, Pandemics, constitutional theory, intergovernmental relations, constitutional law, pandemics
410-428
Da Silva, Michael
05ad649f-8409-4012-8edc-88709b1a3182
Da Silva, Michael
05ad649f-8409-4012-8edc-88709b1a3182
Da Silva, Michael
(2024)
Public health, internal borders, and the ends of federalism.
Canadian Journal of Law and Society, 38 (3), .
(doi:10.1017/cls.2023.22).
Abstract
Questions concerning border closures during pandemics often focus on international borders or rights-based considerations. Closures of internal border in federal countries, like Canada, raise independent concerns regarding who can close internal borders when. Those questions are not exhausted by rights-based considerations and cannot be resolved using brute empirical measures. They instead implicate the nature and ends of federalism. This text uses the case of internal border restrictions in Canada during COVID-19 to explore whether the kinds of closures there can be justified on federalism grounds. It argues that the case for provinces being able to unilateral enact interprovincial border closures in federal countries, as observed in Canada during COVID-19, do not withstand scrutiny. It attends to possible justifications for federalism to demonstrate that the best arguments for federalism do not support provincial control over borders that justify provinces possessing, let alone exercising, unilateral authority to close interprovincial borders to country-persons.
Text
CJLS AAM
- Accepted Manuscript
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public-health-internal-borders-and-the-ends-of-federalism
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Accepted/In Press date: 22 August 2023
e-pub ahead of print date: 21 February 2024
Keywords:
Borders, COVID-19, Constitutional Law, Constitutional Theory, Federalism, Intergovernmental Relations, Pandemics, constitutional theory, intergovernmental relations, constitutional law, pandemics
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 481778
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/481778
PURE UUID: 255e9c50-9497-41f3-b8c1-537206b42e7b
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Date deposited: 07 Sep 2023 16:36
Last modified: 19 Apr 2024 02:02
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Author:
Michael Da Silva
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