Vaccines in the Time of COVID-19: Using Vaccine Mandates to Teach about the Legal and Ethical Regulation of Business

This article uses the question “Can government and businesses mandate the COVID-19 vaccine?” as a starting point for an interdisciplinary discussion appropriate for a variety of business laws classes. This timely and engaging question lends itself to a class discussion on law, ethics, and behavioral economics, which will help students integrate their learning across these disciplines. This lesson is appropriate for courses on the Legal and Ethical Regulation of Business as well as Employment Law at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. In addition to currently being an extremely timely topic, mandatory vaccination will remain an important issue for years to come as many experts predict immunity will wane with time and booster vaccines will be required.

One of the most important learning goals of this lesson is improving students’ understanding of the complexities surrounding the legal regulation of business in the United States. Real-world business dilemmas often have many interrelated legal issues and students will develop a true understanding of how to integrate various areas of the law. The lesson pulls together different legal concepts including federalism, statutory interpretation, administrative law, stare decisis, constitutional law, and employment discrimination. Additionally, the lesson is an excellent way to develop students’ analytical and critical thinking skills. This lesson can also be used to develop students’ ability to analyze issues from competing ethical frameworks. These mandates are a particularly interesting topic for ethical analysis since there are many hypothetical variations depending on the specific vaccine mandate at issue, and who it covers. Additionally, this article discusses how vaccine mandates can be used to introduce a class discussion on behavioral economics.