COVID-19: Introducing a sliding scale between legality and scientific knowledge

Abstract

This article aims to explore the new normal in lawmaking during the COVID-19 pandemic. It proves how the pandemic has affected the making of legal norms, in terms of both process and content. It argues that COVID-19 legislation is largely driven by scientific data for the sake of public health. In this context, it explains how national-decision making is influenced by expert advisory bodies that attempt to specify how public health may be preserved during a pandemic crisis. Moreover, it sheds light into the fact that law-making during the first phases of the pandemic was approved and endorsed by the populations of states, due to their fear of the unknown disease. However, as the pandemic steadily became an established truth, the public’s trust in lawmaking started to decrease. These shifts are well explained if one conceives lawmaking by expertise as a sliding scale, the ends of which are legality at one end and expertise coupled with popular acceptance at the other. This unique sliding scale depicts how COVID-19 lawmaking functioned, balancing between opposite trends.