In this issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, our friend Sonia M. Suter of George Washington University Law School corrals a great team of authors to collectively examine “First Amendment Values in Health Care,” a topic of great depth, complexity, and variety that impacts nearly ever facet of law and health care in the United States today. In her opening article on reproductive technologies and free speech, Sonia writes that “The Court, it seems, is using the First Amendment to protect and promote certain perspectives, which … is unconstitutional.” Readers of this symposium will see this scenario play out again and again, as the First Amendment is used as a blunt tool, sometimes more credibly and effectively than others, to silence some voices while amplifying others. And the variety of situations touched upon by First Amendment issues is breathtaking. In this symposium alone we see articles focused on physician’s professional advice, the disestablishment of hospitals with religious affiliations, vaccine hesitancy and religion, and the implications of the Supreme Court’s COVID-free exercise cases. Taken together this is a fascinating collection of important papers, with topics that are at once both timely and timeless.
Of course, just as with the symposium above, our independent articles and columns remain full of material related to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic. This issue contains articles on vaccine anxieties, justice for marginalized populations during the pandemic, do-not-resuscitate orders for COVID-19 patients, and legal interventions to counter COVID-19 denialism. Our peer review queue remains full of thoughtful and probing articles investigating many different aspects of the pandemic, so look for more of this content in future issues of JLME.
Finally, we are proud to note that beginning with next issue we will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics. While we will be publishing special content in the pages of our physical journal, look as well for commemorative collections of JLME articles through the years at our online home hosted by Cambridge University Press. Most of these collections will be open-access and free to everyone, so we invite you to look back on some of our old classics collected next to our most current work. I think you will find that the last 50 years have been quite a journey for JLME, and we remain ever-grateful that you have chosen to take that journey with us.
