War on COVID: Warfare and its Discontents

44 Pages Posted: 6 Apr 2022 Last revised: 23 Sep 2023

Date Written: June 30, 2022

Abstract

This essay analyzes the wartime framing of “fighting” a war on COVID-19—to “fight that invisible enemy,” coronavirus. How might lawmakers address social crises, such as COVID, with the urgency of an emergency without reinforcing our overly-militarized, securitized, and policed state? The problem with a securitized approach is that the notion of security combines conceptual ambiguity with heightened urgency and this indeterminacy can shape and even distort legality in exceptional moments.

I examine the use of the security framework in the context of war-related legal authority to address the pandemic and steps necessary for building a post-pandemic recovery. Importantly, this project fits within the body of scholarship that is redefining national security law studies—by questioning what is meant by “security,” by “racing” national security, and by interrogating what the concept of “security” foregrounds and erases. This broader body of scholarship questions whether security is an inherently statist concept? What kinds of expertise it empowers and whose knowledge matters in identifying threats? What is the relationship of security to legality? Does security require exceptionalism? How do we cabin “emergency” law?

I draw on historical analogies, outline the benefits and shortcomings of a security law approach to COVID, and propose an alternative paradigm to meet the current moment with an ethics, politics, and law of care, rather than a framework of war, militarization and securitization, as these latter approaches often promote “law and order” over justice.

Suggested Citation

Powell, Catherine, War on COVID: Warfare and its Discontents (June 30, 2022). 70 UCLA L. Rev. Disc. 2 (2023), Fordham Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 4074967, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4074967 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4074967

Catherine Powell (Contact Author)

Fordham University School of Law ( email )

150 West 62nd Street
New York, NY 10023
United States

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