Book Review: Soft Law and Global Health Problems. Lessons from Responses to HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis
| Date | 01 December 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663918797375 |
| Published date | 01 December 2018 |
| Author | John Harrington |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Book Reviews
Social & Legal Studies
2018, Vol. 27(6) 799–809
Book Reviews
ª The Author(s) 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0964663918797375
journals.sagepub.com/home/sls
SHARIFAH SEKALALA, Soft Law and Global Health Problems. Lessons from Responses to HIV/AIDS,
Malaria and Tuberculosis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017, pp. 312,
ISBN 9781107278950, £69.99 (hbk).
In her impressive monograph Soft Law and Global Health Problems, Sharifah Sekalala
offers an innovative and meticulously argued legal perspective on the struggle over
intellectual property and access to essential medicines in the global south. Playing out
from the mid-1990s, and a centrepiece of global health studies, this conflict has been
written about from many perspectives. The levelling-up and globalization of patent rules
through the World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) TRIPS agreement after 1995 has
drawn the attention of IP scholars and trade lawyers alike. They have been joined and
interrogated by human rights analysts, particularly those concerned with the substance
and bite of the right to health set out in Article 12 of the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICSECR) and equivalent provisions of other UN
treaties. Constructivist international relations scholars have studied the manner in which
pharmaceutical industry representatives and pro-access activists each formed coalitions
for law reform and cultivated wider publics by strategically framing the issues. Econo-
mists and ethicists have reflected on how to mobilize resources and incentivize drug
development for neglected diseases and marginalized populations. This manifold scho-
larly and practical effort has of course gained urgency from the unfolding HIV/AIDS
pandemic and the failure to contain and eliminate endemic diseases such as tuberculosis
and malaria.
Less attention has been paid to the specifically legal quality of the different landmarks
in this struggle: the TRIPS...
To continue reading
Request your trial