Jose Alvarez, NYU Law; Roderick Hills, NYU Law; Shitong Qiao, University of Hong Kong

Event Description:
This is the first talk in our three-part series, COVID and Constitutions, which explores how the current pandemic challenges national and international legal orderings. This week, Professor Alvarez argues that COVID-19 has both validated the premises of the World Health Organization’s constitution and demonstrated the global health regime’s abject failure. Like other U.N. specialized agencies, the WHO relies on its technocratic legitimacy and states’ self-interest to secure compliance with their obligations; it is underfunded and overly deferential to its most powerful members. COVID should be the catalyst for overdue reforms – but neither the world’s leading power, the United States, nor its challenger, China, is willing to empower the WHO to intrude more forcefully into states’ domestic affairs, as it must to protect global public health. Shitong Qiao will respond to Professor Alvarez’s critique from China’s perspective.