Law & Ethics in Public Health Unit 1

The Introduction to Law, Medicine, and Bioethics: Role of Interdisciplinary Leadership in Influencing Health and Public

Health Policy and Democratic Systems of Governance

Mary Beth Quaranta Morrissey1 and Basia D. Ellis2 1 Fordham University Global Health Care Innovation Management Center and Gabelli School of

Business, New York, United States 2 College of Education, California State University Sacramento

This collection of articles takes up a thematic focus on law, medicine, and bioethics in the contexts of the pandemic environment, including a range of issues concerning democ- racy, climate change and adaptive governance, structural inequities and health disparities, and social justice. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives, contributors to the collec- tion of articles engage with the transformations in psychological and social life being wrought by the pandemic experience, challenging theorizing embedded in neoliberal paradigms that heighten suffering and risks of harm for vulnerable communities, and proposing alternative theoretical frameworks relevant to the global world and global health as radicalized by pandemic threats.

Public Significance Statement This article serves a critically important public interest at this time in the unfolding history of psychology and the relationship of psychology to the experience of the global world in the COVID-19 pandemic environment as it has impacted diverse societies and peoples. The authors highlight the expanding role and responsibility of psychology in engaging in interdisciplinary dialogues across the domains of law, medicine, and bioethics and their influence on democratic systems of governance.

Keywords: law, medicine, bioethics, democracy, equity

The Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (the Journal) is pleased to share a collection of articles, organized by guest co- editors Mary Beth Quaranta Morrissey and Basia Ellis, that examines contemporary theoretical scholarship in the areas of law, medicine, and bioethics and the role of interdisciplinary leader- ship in influencing health and public health pol- icy. The taking up of a thematic focus on the

relationship of law, medicine, and bioethics to psychology and allied disciplines and fields is timely given the Severe Acute Respiratory Syn- drome Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pan- demic and the still evolving transformations it is effecting across the global world and global health environments. We are pleased to welcome contributions from leading scholars who have been immersed in thick and messy work created or enlarged by the pandemic milieux, addressing in real time the challenges confronting psychol- ogy and multiple health disciplines and the im- plications for global health, public health policy, and democracy. While the Journal has a history ofengagement withinterdisciplinary scholarship, including the May 2016 special issue “Concep- tual Issues in Health and Society,” co-edited by

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Mary Beth Quaranta Morrissey https://orcid.org/0000- 0002-2913-4235 Correspondence concerning this article should be ad-

dressed to Mary Beth Quaranta Morrissey, Fordham Uni- versity Global Health Care Innovation Management Center and Gabelli School of Business, New York, United States. Email: [email protected]

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Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology

© 2021 American Psychological Association 2021, Vol. 41, No. 4, 213–215 ISSN: 1068-8471 https://doi.org/10.1037/teo0000195

Mary Beth Quaranta Morrissey and Bruce Jen- nings, this collection of articles is the first of its kind for the Journalfor the purposesofopening up the field of critical theoretical scholarship in psy- chology to thematic dialogues addressing the con- stellation of relationships and complexities in law, medicine, and bioethics. Morrissey, a Fordham University Global Health Care Innovation Man- agement Center Fellow and Gabelli School of Business and Graduate Schools adjunct faculty member who concentrates her work in aging, health and public health law and policy, and research,andEllis,anAssociateProfessorofChild Development at California State University Sacra- mento who works at the intersection of sociocul- tural psychological theory and critical migration scholarship, together bring a broad interdisciplin- ary perspective to curating this collection. The first article in the series, published in this

issue, is by Joseph J. Fins, a physician bioethicist and well-known interlocutor in the transdisciplin- ary space of psychology, law, and policy. Joseph Fins’ contribution to the collection will be fol- lowed by contributions to later issues from Lisa Cosgrove, Morrissey, and Jennings, and a com- mentary by Thomas Teo. A thread that runs through all the contributions to this collection is theorizing about democracy and the structural threats to democracy posed by the pandemic that go well beyond virus infection. Fins (2021) examines the experience of New

York during the height of the pandemic, highlight- ing the role of government in policy decision making and commenting on the meaning of such policymaking for “deliberative democracy,” which refers to “discursive and an evidence-based process” aimed at serving the public. For Fins, it is also “democracy at its very best (p. 220).” Observ- ing the responses of governmental authorities, medical personnel, and the public to the exigencies of the pandemic, from the perspective of a member of the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law as well as long-standing leader of a consulta- tion service at a major medical center, Fins iden- tifies breakdowns in democratic processes and their implications for marginalized communities, and finally, how democracy can remain resilient in a post-pandemic world. Following Fins, Society for Theoretical and

Philosophical Psychology (STPP) scholar and human rights activist Lisa Cosgrove (in press), who is a Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Faculty Fellow at the Applied Ethics Center at the

University of Massachusetts, Boston, and collea- gues examine how the field of psychology and psy-disciplines more generally fail to address global health disparities and social injustices when they align themselves with neoliberal eco- nomics and individualist mental health frame- works that undermine the root social causes of these issues. Drawing on Cosgrove’s work serv- ing as a consultant to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, child psychi- atrist Dainius Puras, and focusing on two recent cases—the global mental health (GMH) move- ment and calls for trauma-informed mental health services for immigrants and refugees, the authors advocate for the adoption and integration of interdisciplinary frameworks in mental health within psychology, as well as across allied fields, to help train professionals to recognize and address the structural determinants of mental health. As a theoretical scholar in the STPP, as well as

aging, health and public health law and policy scholar and practitioner, Morrissey (in press) brings an on-the-ground perspective to the anal- ysis of pandemic threats as informed by her theorizing in phenomenology, including phe- nomenology of the law. Drawing on Hegel, Hus- serl, Vining, and other phenomenological philosophers and scholars, as well as Virginia Woolf and giants in literature and the arts, Mor- rissey contrasts a critical reflective praxis of phenomenology as enacted activism with domi- nant theories of success in health and aging that reflect corporatized appropriations of psycholog- ical and social life, and concomitant dehumaniz- ing impacts upon vulnerable populations and communities, including older persons, persons who are migrating, and persons of color. In advancing a phenomenology of the law, Morris- sey calls for the reconstitution of the common life as reflected in the voices of diverse thinkers, writers and poets. Bruce Jennings (in press), co-editor of the

Journal and prominent ethicist and political sci- entist, turns to the connection between the pan- demicandclimatechangeasachallengeforsocial adaptation and democratic governance. Jennings argues that democracy must function at both an elite, representative level and at an engaged pop- ular and participatory level. To function well as representatives—rather than as agents of special interest groups—elected officials need the pres- sure and the support of an informed citizenry,

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who are engaged in practices of solidarity and mutual care. In recent decades, in the era of global capitalism and neoliberalism, Western democra- cies have neglected the grassroots participatory levelandithasatrophied.Butthegrowingnecessity of adaptation planning and preparedness for health maintenance and climate change offers an institu- tional opportunity for democratic revival from the bottom up torestorelegitimacyto democraticideals of equity and justice in the political culture and to make representational institutions of governance capable of attending to the common good and building consensus on legislative and policy issues once more. The collection of articles on law, medicine, and

bioethics curated by Morrissey and Ellis concludes with a commentary by renowned critical theoret- ical psychologist Thomas Teo (in press). Teo’s extensive work on critiques of ideology and horizons of knowledge will help illuminate the range of theoretical perspectives and concerns addressed by the contributors across the domains of law, medicine, and bioethics.

References

Fins, J. J. (2021). Is deliberative democracy possible during a pandemic? Reflections of a bioethicist. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psy- chology, 41(4), 216–225. https://doi.org/10.1037/ teo0000191

Herrawi, F., Logan, J., Cheng, C., & Cosgrove, L. (in press). Global health, human rights, and the limits of the Psy-Disciplines. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology.

Jennings, B. (in press). The ordeal of adaptation: Governing health, climate, and ourselves. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology.

Morrissey, M. B. Q. (in press). Advancing a phenom- enology of law as critical reflective praxis: Enact- ments of the common life and good, maternal roots, and the health of communities and publics. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology.

Teo, T. (in press). From killability to dieabililty in Western societies. Journal of Theoretical and Phil- osophical Psychology.

Received July 2, 2021 Accepted August 19, 2021 ▪

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INTRODUCTION TO LAW 215