King's College London

National responses to the pandemic have varied significantly in terms of the use of emergency powers, public health measures, institutional disruption, social policies, and welfare. The project, ‘Lex-Atlas: Covid-19: A Comparative Study of National Legal Responses to Covid-19’, will give insight and analysis of legal responses to Covid-19 from countries with differing income and inequality levels and legal and political systems.

Country reports will address the legal framework, institutional performance, public health measures, social and labour policy, and measures relating to human rights and the protection of vulnerable groups.  The reports will be updated throughout 2021 as national responses to the pandemic evolve.

Project outputs will be essential for political leaders and policy makers to evaluate the effectiveness of the response and to prepare for future global health emergencies.

‘Lex-Atlas: Covid-19: A Comparative Study of National Legal Responses to COVID-19’ is a collaboration between UCL, King’s College London and the Max Planck Institute of Comparative Public Law and International Law.

Dr Octavio Ferraz, who is leading the project at King’s, said:

‘We are building a remarkable network of legal experts across the world to collaborate on this project. We will create what, we hope, will be the most comprehensive and accurate record of legal responses to Covid 19. Most importantly, it will be available open source to everyone and permanently, an incredible resource on the most important event of the last few decades.’

The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Work will be made available and open access from February 2021.

See the project website lexatlas-c19.org.