Legal Responses to Covid-19 Around the World (English Edition)

During the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, March and April of 2020, we, as a law professor, a judge, and a lawyer in Brazil, were studying the new measures and laws passed to deal with the economic effects of the crisis. In the meanwhile, we met online during a discussion about these measures. Since then, we bounded based on our eagerness to learn about what was happening in Brazil and around the world. In order to understand better what we would face and to have ideas on prospective measures, we tried to do a research about what have been done in previous pandemics, such as the Spanish Flu. We found that little has been written and documented about unemployment, government protections, or other measures in that pandemic. Of course, there was no Internet at that time; however, we could not even find articles in print. Because of the lack of information about the economic effects of previous pandemics, we decided to collect papers from all around the world to leave a legacy to future generations about the distinctive times we are facing now. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses, schools, courts, just about everything else had to shut down for a while. The effects on the economy, employment, contracts, business in general, and people’s income are devastating and may last years. This book has the purpose to register the major discussions, in different countries, about those effects, as well as how governments, courts, conflict resolution and legal communities responded to them. During the months we have been collecting information and reaching people from all the six continents represented in this book, we have learned not only about COVID-19, but also about different cultures, different systems and different perspectives. We also made new friends and re-connected with old ones. Ultimately, it is a book about a situation that joins us all: the need to survive in a time of crisis. We hope we reached our goal of allowing current and future generations to find, in one place, information about the COVID-19 pandemic and its legal implications around the world.

Enjoy the journey!

Brazil – August, 2020. Cláudio Jannotti da Rocha, Flávia Fragale Martins Pepino and Rafael Lara Martins

ISBN 978-65-88059-08-1