How laws collectively shape health outcomes and health inequities—legal determinants of health—is a growing topic of interdisciplinary study. I draw out geographers’ contributions to this field by bringing together health geographies and legal geographies. I trace the contours of an emergent legal geographies of health subfield across three areas of inquiry: the bordering of public health, legal geographies of reproduction, and legal-political ecologies of health. Together they help elucidate how laws, including enactments of sovereignty, help produce (un)healthful ecologies, create uneven vulnerabilities to harm, and shape embodiment, with implications for health justice.
Jenna M. Loyd (Fri,) studied this question.