ABSTRACT
COVID-19 has impacted disproportionately along familiar fault lines of systemic inequality and disadvantage. It has highlighted once more how health inequalities are driven by social inequalities, and the pressing need to address these if health equity and social justice are to be improved. This chapter explores the role of law in this context. It assesses moves to explicitly articulate law within the social determinants of health framework and questions the place of addressing inequalities in these accounts. It is argued that in demonstrating the connection between social and health inequalities so profoundly and urgently, the pandemic is a provocation to look again at how law and legal systems might help in delivering greater health justice. Focusing on the gendered impacts of COVID-19, the pandemic illustrates the necessity of a public health law that foregrounds law's role in improving fairness in social arrangements and the distribution of resources.
