“In June 2007, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, (CDC) and eighteen multidisciplinary partners convened the first National Summit on Public Health Legal Preparedness. This Summit was without precedent in terms of the broad expertise and stature of the invited participants and its aims. The purpose of this working meeting was to provide a structured opportunity for senior officials and leaders from a wide array of sectors and disciplines to take measure of public health legal preparedness as it stands today, and to develop a shared, national action agenda supportive of law-based strategies to address potential public health emergencies such as pandemic influenza and other emerging threats. This supplemental issue to the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics contains status papers developed by leading experts in the fields of public health and public health law, and presents the Summit’s work product: a shared national action agenda for public health legal preparedness.”