By Sara Collin
A worldwide database of COVID-19 cases is uniting more than 70 countries as judges, lawmakers and lawyers continue to navigate pandemic related litigation and the ways in which it’s evolving amid year three.
Over the past two years, courts across the globe have faced an onslaught of novel legal questions and challenges, as individuals, corporations and public bodies have turned to the legal system to resolve the unprecedented private and public law issues raised by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In response, a new initiative has emerged with the recent launch of covid19litigation.org, an open-access database of international COVID-19-related court decisions. The COVID-19 Litigation Project, which is funded in part by the World Health Organization and is coordinated by Italy’s University of Trento’s Faculty of Law in collaboration with an international network of judges and legal scholars, provides free access to legal judgments on COVID-19-related issues from over 70 different countries.
“We understood pretty soon that there would end up being a lot of litigation about the impact of the measures adopted by states on fundamental rights,” explained Paola Iamiceli, a Full Professor of Private Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Trento and the Scientific Coordinator for the Project.
