All states have criminal laws that can be used to punish sexual behaviors that pose some risk of HIV transmission; half have HIV-specific laws criminalizing sexual contact by people with HIV unless they abstain from unsafe sex, or disclose their HIV status and obtain consent from their partners....

It has become a commonplace to claim that HIV has been treated "differently" than other disease by health policy makers. This claim - the "exceptionalism thesis" - is, I argue here, fundamentally ahistorical, overlooking that virtually all major public health threats have inspired political...

Historically, public health law has been shaped by the social response to serious epidemics. Boards of health and full-fledged health departments were created in the late 18 and 19th centuries in response to yellow fever and cholera. Disease reporting, mandatory screening, and compulsory...