Journals, Databases, Websites & Blogs

Note: This section features selected blogs, website and journals (including special issues) that contain COVID-19 literature. An excellent resource of such literature has been compiled by the George C Marshall European Centre for Security Studies in Germany, and is being regularly updated – see Jonathan G Odom, ‘COVID-19 and the Law: A Compilation of Legal Resources’. This is a list arranged by topic, and includes mostly international law commentary, and some US domestic commentary, using such authoritative sources such as EJIL: Talk! and OpinioJuris. We have included below resources not included in the list by Professor Odom.

Administrative Law in the Common Law World - adminlawblog.org

This blog contains many COVID-19 blog posts, such as:

• Joe Tomlinson et al, ‘Judicial Review during the COVID Pandemic’
  • Part I (26 May 2020)
  • Part II (28 May 2020)
  • Goutham Shivshankar, ‘Debating the Applicability of India’s Disaster Management Law to COVID-19’ (19 May 2020)
  • Andrew Geddis, ‘The New Zealand Lockdown and the Law’ (11 May 2020)
  • Lee Marsons, ‘Covid-19 and the UK Administrative State’ (31 March 2020)
  • Jonathan Liberman, ‘COVID-19 and Administrative Powers in Australia’ (30 March 2020)

American Association of Law Libraries, FCIL-SIS Asian Law Interest Group - Asian Legal Responses to COVID-19 Newletter

This newsletter highlights legal responses to COVID-19 in Asian countries.

• First Monthly Newsletter (June 2020) - covers Armenia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand
• Second Monthly Newsletter (July 2020) – covers Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Brunei, China, Cyrus, Indonesia and Vietnam
• Third Monthly Newsletter (August 2020) - covers Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan

Asian Law Centre, Melbourne Law School - Asian Legal Conversations - COVID-19

This site provides a platform to ‘discuss and compare experiences on issues either raised or exacerbated by COVID-19, which are shared by the jurisdictions of the Asia Pacific region. It also discusses country-specific issues’. Contributions range in format from written blog posts, short original articles to video recordings. Contributions can be browsed by topic, region and jurisdiction.

Topics include: Celebrating Asian Australians; Civil Society; Courts, Lawyers and the Administration of Justice; Daily Life; Finance and Business; Government / Governance; Health Care; and Labour.

Examples of recent articles include:

• Matthew Harding and Hui Jing, ‘COVID-19 and Charity Law in China’ (30 July 2020)
• Ploykaew Porananond and Wendy Ng, ‘Competition Law and COVID-19 in Asia: Thailand’ (28 July 2020)
• Citizenship, Constitutionalism and Civil Liberties: A Briefing Note on Recent Developments in India (17 July 2020)
• Iain Payne, ‘Transition in Crisis: COVID-19 and Federalisation in Nepal’ (16 July 2020)

AUSPUBLAW: Australian Public Law
This blog is from the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at UNSW Law and the Australian Association of Constitutional Law. It has a dedicated COVID-19 and Public Law site.

Posts include:

• Evans, Kylie and Nicholas Petrie, ‘COVID-19 and the Australian Human Rights Acts’ (6 May 2020)
• Moulds, Sarah, ‘Keeping Watch on COVID-19 Laws: Are Parliamentary Committees up to the Job?’ (1 May 2020)
• Mcintyre, Joe, Anna Olijnyk and Kieran Pender ‘Courts and COVID-19: Challenges and Opportunities in Australia’ (4 May 2020)
• Faux, Margaret, ‘Frenetic Law Making During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Impact on Doctors, Patients and the Medicare System’ (24 April 2020)
• Orr, Graeme D, ‘The Demos in a Pandemic: Staging Elections in a Health Emergency’ (6 April 2020)

BRILL – open access

This publisher of scholarly books and journals has created a COVID-19 Collection, which includes content from many journals and on several topics, including law. Law journal titles include International Human Rights Law Review, European Journal of Comparative Law and Governance, and Journal of International Humanitarian Legal Studies. BRILL scholarship is normally only available via subscription or purchase, but all scholarship on the BRILL platform COVID-19 Collection is available on open access until 30 April 2021.

Cambridge University Press, Coronavirus Free Access Collection

CUP has made a collection of COVID-19 journal articles freely available. To access law articles, click on Refine Listing, scroll to Subject, click Show More and then select Law. The results appear at the bottom of the page.

CATO Institute Pandemics and Policy

This US institution publishes papers, blogs, podcasts and research briefs on topics such as COVID-19 and Foreign Policy, COVID-19 and Labor Regulation, Easing Regulatory Burden on Health Care, Economic Impact of COVID-19, Homeschooling & Education during COVID-19, and the Proper Role of Government in a Pandemic.

CoronaNet Research Project: Tracking Government Responses Towards Covid-19

This largescale database compiles government responses to the pandemic. It contains over 15,000 policy announcements from governments around the world visible since December 31st 2019. Data can be viewed and downloaded by eg: country, type of policy/measure. There are visualisations and useful country compare features.

The data yields detailed information on:

• The level of government responding to the corona virus crisis (e.g. national, regional/state, local/municipal)
• Specific actions taken (e.g. travel bans, investments in the public health sector, etc.)
• Geographical areas targeted by these measures
• Who or what they are targeting (e.g. foreigners, ventilators)
• Compliance mechanisms (e.g. mandatory or voluntary)
• Timing of policy responses.

In addition to the government response datasets, the database also includes datasets on

• Tests from the CoronaNet testing database
• Cases/deaths/recovered from the JHU data repository
• Country-level covariates including GDP, V-DEM democracy scores, human rights indices, power-sharing indices, and press freedom indices.

For those not familiar with using statistical programmes, there is a learning platform.

COVID-19 Law Lab

The COVID-19 Law Lab initiative gathers and shares legal documents from over 190 countries across the world. It can be searched by topic, country and region. The Lab is a joint project of the World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law and Georgetown University.

COVID-19 Litigation: Open Access Caselaw Database

The Covid-19 Litigation Project traces and make accessible in a dedicated Database the litigation stemming all over the world from challenges related to public health measures adopted within the pandemic.

DEM-DEC (Democratic Decay)

This website has been temporarily renamed COVID-DEM. It has an ‘Infohub to help democracy analysts worldwide track, compile, and share information on how State responses to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) are impacting on democratic governance’. This infohub includes a Research section, which contains a list of academic research, including working papers and published papers, on COVID-19’s impact on democracy.

Freedom House – Democracy During Pandemic

This site includes news and perspectives from around the world, expert comment, media, and a new newsletter – Keeping Democracy Healthy in a Pandemic (this is free, but requires registration).

HEIN ONLINE - COVID-19 in America: Response, Issues, and Law (subscriber access only)

This database compiles federal government reports and publications on the various ways COVID-19 has impacted every aspect of life. It is organised into the following areas of impact: Economics, Global, Health, and Society. It also includes scholarly articles. There is a useful Libguide to help use and navigate this database.

The International Association of Constitutional Law (IACL-AIDC) Vlog Symposium: Constitutional Reflections on the Pandemic

This series of videos comprises an introduction to the Symposium by IACL Blog Co-Editors, Dr Erika Arban and Dr Dinesha Samararatne, and insights from experts on constitutional law in individual countries – including Argentina, Australia, Ethiopia, Mexico, Nigeria, Palestine, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, South Korea, Sweden and Uzbekistan.

International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), COVID-19 Guidance and Resources

This website provides a collection of privacy news, resources, reports, guidance and tools covering the COVID-19 global outbreak.

International Bar Association COVID-19 Articles

This contains many articles on different topics, such as property law, contract law, labour law, legal practice, court, human rights and consumer law. For example:

• Force majeure and breach of contracts in Argentina (1 October 2020)
• Covid-19: use of face masks raises health and environmental questions (28 September 2020)
• Covid-19: regulators confronted with scourge of ‘fake cures’ (28 September 2020)
• Amendments to India’s Companies Act in light of the Covid-19 pandemic (23 September 2020)
• Ugandan LGBTI community left vulnerable in pandemic lockdown (10 September 2020)
• Delivery of justice in the time of Covid-19 (21 August 2020)
• Covid-19: pandemic highlights holes in workers’ rights (7 May 2020)

International Commission of Jurists, Human Rights in the time of COVID-19: Front and Centre – ICJ news, Articles, Op-Eds, Legal Blogs, Videos

Includes the following articles, opinion pieces and briefing papers:

• COVID-19 pandemic exposes India’s housing crisis – ICJ Briefing Paper
• Judiciaries during COVID-19: South American experience

International Law Blog COVID-19 page

This page includes posts such as:

• Ziad Al Atiyah, ‘A Crisis of Compliance Regime in the World Health Organisation?’ (21 May 2020)
• Valerio Mazzuoli, ‘State Responsibility and COVID-19: Bringing China to the International Court of Justice?’ (15 May 2020)

Journal of Law and the Biosciences: Special Pandemic Issue

This special issue is constantly adding articles. We include each article in Part A above, but a complete list is available and regularly updated on the Stanford Law School Law and Biosciences Blog. To stay up to date you can receive email or rss alerts when new articles are added.

Just Security This online journal is based in the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law. The journal website contains a section dedicated to Coronavirus Coverage, including a regularly updated topical index of COVID-19 articles in Just Security, and a useful and regularly updated Timeline of the Coronavirus Pandemic and U.S. Response.

Law Librarians Monitoring COVID-19 in Latin America and the Caribbean

This site includes Biweekly Reports, sections for each cluster of countries, top sources and publications/presentations. You can also subscribe to updates regarding upcoming reports, publications, etc.

Law Library of Congress Global Legal Monitor (‘GLM’)

This is a very useful resource to keep up with COVID-19 legal developments across the world, particularly in the area of legislation. You can set up an email or rss alert to GLM by topic (COVID-19 articles are in the topic ‘Epidemics’) or country - see https://www.loc.gov/subscribe/. To see a list of all GLM COVID-19 articles published to date, see the ‘Law Library GLM articles’ heading in the Coronavirus Resource Guide - this list is arranged by country.

LexisNexis: Law360 COVID-19

Law360's dedicated page includes breaking news, features, analysis and commentary on all aspects of COVID-19 and the law. Access to all content is free. The content is mostly US with selected foreign content. Alerts can be set up by registering.

McGill University, Peter MacKell Chair in Federalism Federalism & the COVID-19 Pandemic - A Compendium of (Re)sources
This site includes scholarly literature, blogs, working papers, policy literature etc., divided into the following categories:

1. Blogs or websites dedicated to the pandemic and/or federalism
2. Podcasts / videos / conferences
3. Research projects and calls for papers
4. Specific federations
5. Comparing federations

Melbourne Asia Review

This open access online journal is from the University of Melbourne Asia Institute. It includes a COVID-19 Analysis section, which includes articles such as:

• Tanya Spisbah, ‘India is Shaping a ‘New Multilateralism’ in a post-COVID World’
• Rafiqa Qurrata A'yun and Abdil Mughis Mudhoffir, ‘Indonesia is Exploiting the COVID-19 Crisis for Illiberal Purposes’
• Delia Lin, ‘Lost in Translation: COVID-19 and China’s “Wet Markets”’

OpenGlobalRights

The COVID-19 part of this organisation’s website contains articles on the human rights challenges of the pandemic. See for example:

• Citlalli Ochoa and Lisa Reinsberg ‘Cancelled, Postponed, Virtual: COVID-19’s Impact on Human Rights Oversight’ (17 July 2020)
• Dominique Virgil, ‘The Right to Employment Security in Post-COVID Indonesia’ (9 July 2020)
• Gunnar Ekeløve-Slydal and Liv H Kvanvig, ‘Lockdowns vs. Religious Freedom: COVID-19 is a Trust Building Exercise’ (8 July 2020)
• Guillermo Torres, ‘A Post-Pandemic World: Well-Being for All or Deepening Inequality?’ (7 July 2020)

Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker

This database, created by the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, collects information on several different common policy responses that governments have taken to respond to the pandemic on 17 indicators such as school closures and travel restrictions. It has data from more than 160 countries. Datasets can be downloaded in various formats, viewed as a timeseries, and explored in various ways. There are guidance notes and notes on how the data is collected and how the indices are calculated. There are also visualisations, including data visualisations of country data or heat map over time, and interactive visualisations of each policy indicator. The data is provided free of charge, and the data use policy governed by a Creative Commons licence.

The COVID-19 Government Response Tracker states on its site that:

Governments are taking a wide range of measures to tackle the COVID-19 outbreak. We aim to track and compare worldwide government responses to the coronavirus rigorously and consistently. Systematic information on which measures governments take, and when, can help us understand the responses in a consistent way, aiding efforts to fight the pandemic. Our team collects information on common policy responses, scores the stringency of such measures, and aggregates these into a Stringency Index. The data is also used to inform a ‘Lockdown rollback checklist’ which looks at how closely countries meet four of the six World Health Organisation recommendations for relaxing ‘lockdown’.

Oxford University Press COVID-19 Resources

OUP has made COVID-19 journal articles, book chapters and other scholarly publications freely available. To access law articles, click on Browse all relevant journal articles, and then select Law from the subject list in the left-hand menu.

The Regulatory Review - Comparing Nations’ Responses to COVID-19

This publication of the Penn Program on Regulation from the University of Pennsylvania in the US, is a freely available and constantly updated special series of essays. Articles include:

• Richard Parker, Lessons from New Zealand’s COVID-19 Success (9 June 2020)
• Mariana Urban and Eduardo Saad-Diniz, Why Brazil’s COVID-19 Response is Failing (22 June 2020)
• Josefina Court and José Tomás Correa, Chile’s Political and Institutional Response to COVID-19 (24 June 2020 )
• Ana Santos Rutschman, Portugal’s Response to COVID-19 (1 July 2020)
• Neysun A Mahboubi, Comparative Administrative Law Matters in the Fight Against COVID-19 (2 July 2020)
• Cary Coglianese, Law, Leadership, and Legitimacy in a Time of Disease (6 July 2020)

Transparency International

Transparency International is a global coalition against corruption.
The News section has regular COVID-19 articles such as:

• ‘Anti-corruption Response to COVID-19 Must Include Women’ (10 June 2020)
• ‘Corruption and the Coronavirus’ (18 March 2020)

The Blog section includes posts such as:

• ‘Protection of Whistleblowers during COVID-19’ (22 June 2020)
• ‘Speaking up to Save Patients’ Lives’ (22 June 2020)

Verfassungsblog on Matters Constitutional

This blog is published by the Berlin Social Science Centre’s Centre for Global Constitutionalism. It has a dedicated COVID 19 and States of Emergency Debates site, which states ‘As states of emergency are declared throughout the world in response to the spread of COVID-19, concerns arise as to the use – and potential abuse – of power in a time of crisis. In this Symposium, comparative country reports show the use of emergency powers from the perspective of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law’.

From 6 April to 26 May 2020, the Verfassungsblog and Democracy Reporting International Symposium reported on states of emergency and measures taken in response to COVID-19 in 74 countries, analysing legal measures and the use of emergency powers which impact nearly 80% of global population. The fifty days of the Symposium covered the height of the global legal reaction to the pandemic, offering a snapshot of countries in collective crisis. Link to all individual Country Reports, which cover:

Albania, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, Estonia, European Union, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, Ukraine, United States of America, Venezuela and Vietnam

The final contribution is ‘States of Emergency’ by Joelle Grogan, the Coordinator of the Symposium. It ‘aims to trace the central themes, questions and issues raised by the Symposium. It considers constitutional safeguards on a ‘state of emergency’, and whether this is preferable to the use of ordinary legislation in managing a crisis. It examines the dangers of executive action, and whether countries have been successful in limiting the potential for abuse, as well as preventing or sanctioning it. It examines how states have struggled to maintain some degree of legislative and judicial normality, while other states have given it up entirely. It considers the relevance of trust and transparency of government action, and the concerns related to an approach driven by surveillance and sanction. Finally, it identifies the most successful approaches adopted, and the most detrimental. In doing so, it aims to form part of that global conversation which seeks to identify the most concerning legal developments in a global emergency, but also to advocate for the best practices emerging worldwide’.