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Unit of study_
LAWS6848: Law, Business and Healthy Lifestyles
2025 unit information
Everyone wants to live a long and healthy life, but what are the impediments to a longer lifespan, and a longer healthy life expectancy in Australia? Communicable diseases might get more attention, but it is cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and tobacco-related diseases (known as ‘non-communicable diseases’, or NCDs) that remain society’s greatest killers. This unit is about legal and regulatory responses to the leading risk factors for NCDs, including tobacco use, obesity, poor diet, harmful use of alcohol and sedentary lifestyles. NDs are the leading causes of preventable disease in Australia, the United States, high-income countries generally and, increasingly, in low and middle-income countries. What can the law do – and what should law be permitted to do – to prevent and control the risk factors for these diseases? Unlike other health threats, NCDs and their risk factors are partly caused by consumer choices that are lived out every day across the country. The challenge of encouraging healthier lifestyles cannot be separated from debates about how best to regulate the businesses that all too often have a vested interest in promoting unhealthy products and lifestyles. Law’s relationship with smoking, vaping, alcohol and food is complex and contested. Nevertheless, governments around the world are experimenting with a wide range of legal strategies to encourage healthier lifestyles. This unit will focus on developments in Australia and the United States, placing legal developments in these countries in a broader, international context. This unit will consider some over-arching questions. What are the global determinants of NCDs, and how are these diseases being managed at the international level? To what extent should law intervene to influence the behaviour of populations – as distinct from treating lifestyle-related risk factors as the personal responsibility of each individual? Does a regulatory approach to the prevention of NCDs imply coercion? Does it signal the emergence of a ‘nanny state’? Does progress in reducing NCDs and their risk factors depend on motivating people to consciously improve their habits and lifestyles? Is it possible to regulate business without micro-managing or dictating commercial decisions and ‘legislating the recipe for tomato ketchup?’. Throughout the unit, students will be encouraged to explore the tension between freedom and personal responsibility, and the broader public interest in a healthy population and a productive economy. Key topics include: Frameworks for thinking about law, and environments that support healthier lifestyles; Global health governance and the prevention of non-communicable diseases; Tobacco control: where to from here? Regulating alcohol; Obesity prevention; and Law’s role in improving diet and nutrition and encouraging active living. Refer to the Sydney Law School timetable - https://canvas.sydney.edu.au/courses/4533/pages/postgraduate-lecture-timetable
Unit details and rules
Managing faculty or University school:
Sydney Law School
| Study level | Postgraduate |
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| Academic unit | Law |
| Credit points | 6 |
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Prerequisites:
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None |
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Corequisites:
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None |
| Prohibitions:
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None |
| Assumed knowledge:
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None |
At the completion of this unit, you should be able to:
- LO1. critically analyse evolving legal responses to risk factors for non-communicable diseases – particularly tobacco use and vaping, obesity, poor diet, harmful use of alcohol and sedentary lifestyle, in the United States, Australia and other comparative countries.
- LO2. critically evaluate the global governance framework for non-communicable diseases and their risk factors at the global level.
- LO3. critically analyse primary sources relating to the legal regulation of risk factors for non-communicable diseases.
- LO4. synthesise, and communicate complex legal arguments, employing relevant legal research methodologies and analytical skills in order to participate in normative debates about the appropriate role of law in disease prevention by reducing risk factors for non-communicable diseases at the population level.
- LO5. demonstrate an appreciation of the capacity for the law to be used innovatively to reduce risk factors for non-communicable diseases, informed by examples of innovation from around the world.
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