Just Benefits? Intersections in Health Law and Social Welfare Law

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue explores vital yet often undertheorised intersections between health law and social welfare law. Drawing on broad conceptions of health as a fundamental right (WHO) and acknowledging governmental responsibilities to provide social security benefits (constitutionally or otherwise), we invite submissions that critically interrogate how these ideals are realised or undermined. Inspired by debates on social welfare law’s ‘identity crisis’ (Meers et al., 2023), we ask how the retrenchment of public welfare systems and the creation of the ‘Welfare State 2.0’ might be productively linked with health law and health outcomes. How have systemic failures in social security—involving flawed automated decision-making (including examples such as Australia’s Robodebt) or the design of regulatory systems that channel individuals towards destitution—contributed to or interacted with health policy and legislation? And how have or will these developments impact health subsidisation and innovation?

This issue invites papers critically examining these intersections, challenging narrow conceptions of social welfare law as merely the ‘law for the poor’ or a ‘dustbin’ of statutes. We seek contributions forging novel connections between social welfare law and health law, welcoming works of critical sociolegal theory, case analysis, legislative or legal system analysis, or empirical work. Submissions are encouraged to explore such facets as:

• Equitable access to entitlements and healthcare for marginalised communities, including benefit adequacy in preventing poverty and ill-health, the realisation of rights for specific vulnerable groups, and law's role in advancing ‘health justice’ and addressing social determinants of health.
• The human rights compatibility and health impacts of behavioural conditionality, benefit sanctions, and ‘welfare to work’ paradigms.
• Constitutional dimensions of health and welfare (as rights, entitlements, or mediated benefits), and the extent to which socioeconomic rights have been reconfigured by market-based reforms or public health emergency powers.
• Systems design, governance, and reform, encompassing accountable automation, administrative justice (including decision-making quality and review mechanisms), the enduring impacts of marketisation and privatisation, and explorations of alternative/devolved governance models.
• The economic underpinnings of health and welfare, including analyses of and challenges to neoliberal orthodoxies, and the legislative expressions of ‘deservingness’ narratives and their consequences for welfare funding and social inequality.
• The legal and policy frameworks for the subsidisation of healthcare, medicines, and health technology through public insurance schemes, examining issues of access, equity, and innovation.
• The legal, ethical, and practical implications of health technology and automation, focusing on algorithmic governance, digital exclusion, data protection, and the balance between innovation and rights.

While submissions to Laws would be grounded in legal analysis, we actively encourage interdisciplinary submissions from legal academics, public health researchers, social policy experts, economists, and historians. Ultimately, this issue aims to challenge social welfare law's perceived marginality and to demonstrate its vital connection to health and wellbeing governance globally.

Dr. Christopher Rudge
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Laws is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• social welfare law
• health law, rights and entitlements
• health governance
• equitable access
• socio-legal studies
• administrative justice
• constitutionalism and welfare
• human rights
• neoliberalism
• welfare reform
• social determinants of health
• health justice