COVID-19 pandemic evoked an urgent need for transformation of political representatives into public health leaders overnight. Due to the pandemic, law became an increasingly visible tool of public health, with a myriad of measures passed to enable disease control by various public authorities. Rule of law conceptual framework enables better understanding of problems related to the legal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with national regulation in Slovakia as a case study to examine how the existing legal framework of a democratic country responded to the need to control the spreading of an unknown, lethal contagious disease.

The combination of legitimate interests of various subjects was very challenging and restrictions had polarized society - in particular the part of the population who did not feel directly at risk from COVID-19 demonstrated its feeling of oppression and distrust, fed by disinformation. Existing rule of law normative and institutional framework served as a safeguard against some disproportionate effects of anti-pandemic measures in Slovakia.

The application of the rule of law doctrine is linked to the human rights value base it is intended to protect, which is inextricably linked to the EU value base. (A “checklist” of empirical indicators had been developed by the Venice Commission in 2016.) Besides need to coordinate to control the pandemic, there is also vital need to control the “infodemic” on the EU level to preserve values and functioning of our common European house.

For more information on this topic, see:

Silvia CAPÍKOVÁ, Eduard BURDA & Mária NOVÁKOVÁ (2021). Measures Introduced in the Slovak Republic in Response to the Public Health Crisis Caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic. Medicine, Law & Society, 14(2).  Print ISSN 2463-7955 Available from: https://doi.org/10.18690/mls.14.2.321-350.2021

Silvia CAPÍKOVÁ & Mária NOVÁKOVÁ (2020). Challenging COVID-19 Times – Possibilities and limitations of law in regulation of health behavior of individuals. Pp.13 – 32. in  Iwona Florek, Andrea Koroncziová, Jose Luis Zamora Manzano (Eds.). Crisis as a Challenge for Human Rights.  Bratislava: Comenius University in Bratislava. 480p. ISBN 978-80-7160-551-5   Available from: https://www.flaw.uniba.sk/fileadmin/praf/Veda/Zborniky/Crisis_as_a_challenge_for_human_rights.pdf