• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.3-30
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• 2021

Reasons for disqualification to restrict a medical person's license should be considered in functional and moral terms. In this sense, the grounds for disqualification of medical personnel should be expanded to include all crimes that have been declared to be "imprisonment without labor or greater punishment" by a court. Because a sentence of "imprisonment without labor or greater punishment" means that it is highly reprehensible and undermines the trust of the state as well as the trust in medical personnel. Therefore, the expansion of the scope of license restrictions for medical personnel cannot be regarded as a violation of "the Less Restrictive Alternative" rule. However, it is necessary to reflect the specificity of medical services in the license restrictions of medical personnel. This is because not all diseases can be treated with current medical services. In addition, unpredictable situations can occur at any time during medical practice. Consequently, the negligence that occurs during medical practice should be carefully examined from a functional perspective of the medical personnel. And it should be treated differently from ordinary crimes. To this end, an independent license review organization should be established to establish expertise in license management.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.105-162
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• 2020

In the pandemic of infectious disease, restrictions of individual liberty have been justified in the name of public health and public interest. In March 2020, the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea passed the revised bill of the 「Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Act.」 The revised bill newly established the legal basis for forced testing and disclosure of the information of confirmed cases, and also raised the penalties for violation of self-isolation and treatment refusal. This paper examines whether and how these individual liberty limiting clauses be justified, and if so on what ethical and philosophical grounds. The authors propose the theories of the philosophy of law related to the justifiability of liberty-limiting measures by the state and conceptualized the dual-aspect of applying the liberty-limiting principle to the infected patient. In COVID-19 pandemic crisis, the infected person became the 'Patient as Victim and Vector (PVV)' that posits itself on the overlapping area of 'harm to self' and 'harm to others.' In order to apply the liberty-limiting principle proposed by Joel Feinberg to a pandemic with uncertainties, it is necessary to extend the harm principle from 'harm' to 'risk'. Under the crisis with many uncertainties like COVID-19 pandemic, this shift from 'harm' to 'risk' justifies the state's preemptive limitation on individual liberty based on the precautionary principle. This, at the same time, raises concerns of overcriminalization, i.e., too much limitation of individual liberty without sufficient grounds. In this article, we aim to propose principles regarding how to balance between the precautionary principle for preemptive restrictions of liberty and the concerns of overcriminalization. Public health crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic requires a population approach where the 'population' rather than an 'individual' works as a unit of analysis. We propose the second expansion of the harm principle to be applied to 'population' in order to deal with the public interest and public health. The new concept 'risk to population,' derived from the two arguments stated above, should be introduced to explain the public health crisis like COVID-19 pandemic. We theorize 'the extended harm principle' to include the 'risk to population' as a third liberty-limiting principle following 'harm to others' and 'harm to self.' Lastly, we examine whether the restriction of liberty of the revised 「Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Act」 can be justified under the extended harm principle. First, we conclude that forced isolation of the infected patient could be justified in a pandemic situation by satisfying the 'risk to the population.' Secondly, the forced examination of COVID-19 does not violate the extended harm principle either, based on the high infectivity of asymptomatic infected people to others. Thirdly, however, the provision of forced treatment can not be justified, not only under the traditional harm principle but also under the extended harm principle. Therefore it is necessary to include additional clauses in the provision in order to justify the punishment of treatment refusal even in a pandemic.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.139-207
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• 2022

As various state restrictions on individual freedom were imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, concerns have been raised that excessive infringements on fundamental rights were indiscriminately permitted based on the public interest of preventing infectious diseases. Therefore, the question of how to set acceptable limits of liberty restrictions on individuals has emerged. However, since the phenomenon of infections spreading to the population is only predicted statistically, how to deal with the risk of the infected individual as a subject of legal analysis has become a problem. In the absence of a theoretical framework of legal analysis of risk, the risk of infected individuals during the pandemic was not analyzed strictly, and proportionality review of infection prevention measures was often only an abstract comparison of the importance of public interest and individual rights. Therefore, this research aims to conduct a theoretical review on how risk can be conceptualized legally in a public health crisis, and to develop a theoretical framework for proportionality review of the risk of liberty-limiting measures during a pandemic. Chapter 2 analyzes the legal philosophical concepts of risk, which are the basis for liberty restrictions during a public health crisis, and applies and extends them to the pandemic. Chapter 3 reviews previous studies related to liberty restriction measures in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and points out they have a limitation that specific criteria for the proportionality review of public health measures in the pandemic have not been presented. Accordingly, Chapter 3 specifies the methodological framework for proportionality review, referring to the theoretical discussion on risks in Chapter 2. Chapter 4 reviews the legitimacy of gathering restriction orders, applying the theoretical discussion in Chapter 2 and the criteria for proportionality review established in Chapter 3. In particular, Section 4 examines logic of proportionality review in judicial precedents over the ban on gathering restrictions implemented in the COVID-19 pandemic. In analyzing the precedents, the logic of proportionality review in each case is critically reviewed and reconstructed based on the theoretical framework presented in this research.