In this lecture, Professor Babcock argues that the problem confronting us is that we are nearing the end of achieving future gains in pollution abatement from traditional sources and the pollution that remains is largely caused by individual behavior. This she says, is true even though polls show that people consistently rate protecting the environment among their highest priorities, say they are willing to pay more to protect environmental resources, and indeed, faithfully contribute to environmental causes. Most efforts to control individual human sources of pollution have failed or not been tried because of the monumental task and cost of regulating personal behavior, the intrusiveness of doing so, and the inhibiting fear of political backlash should regulation be attempted.

This lecture is the author's first step towards understanding why, given the strength of the abstract environmental protection norm, individuals behave in environmentally destructive ways, and what, if anything can be done to change that behavior. For this talk, however, she focuses on only modifying social and personal norms. She also looks at only one circumstance in which norm change may occur, during an environmental crisis accompanied by heightened public activity, what some scholars, like Dan Farber and Michael Vandenbergh, refer to as a “republican moment.” They believe such a moment occurred in response to the environmental disasters of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which briefly resulted in widespread public support for a variety of legislative and regulatory initiatives and spawned the emergence of what she calls the environmental citizen.

While at Georgetown, guided by President DeGoia as my inspiration, I transformed my work to focus on global health. When Linda and Timothy O’Neill endowed the O’Neill Institute, it became a turning point in my life. In the inaugural lecture for the O’Neill chair, I aspired to a world that meets the basic survival needs of the world’s least healthy people, proposing a Framework Convention on Global Health. And next week, I travel to Norway for an international conference to establish such a global treaty—the beginning of a dream come true. I owe this, and so much more to this place on a Hilltop that I have come to love like none other.

What was the political philosophy that brought me through a journey that began with the rights of mental patients, to civil liberties and human rights, through to the health and wellbeing of the most disadvantaged? My transformation from a civil libertarian to a sanitarian startled, even dismayed, many of my friends. When I returned to the United States after living in the United Kingdom for 14 years – bringing my lovely English bride and two young boys with me - I was elected to the National Board of Directors and Executive Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). But by the time I wrote the Model Emergency Health Powers Act for the White House after the World Trade Center and anthrax attacks in 2001, ACLU officials were publicly tearing up my ACLU card on national television.

So, why the transformation from a civil libertarian to a sanitarian? In this lecture, I will discuss the evolution of my three passions—mental health, civil liberties, and global health in my personal “Life of Learning.”

What is truly needed, and which richer countries instinctively do for their own citizens, is to meet what I call "basic survival needs." By focusing on the major determinants of health, the international community could dramatically improve prospects for good health. Basic survival needs include sanitation and sewage, pest control, clean air and water, tobacco reduction, diet and nutrition, essential medicines and vaccines, and functioning health systems. Meeting everyday survival needs may lack the glamour of high-technology medicine or dramatic rescue, but what they lack in excitement they gain in their potential impact on health, precisely because they deal with the major causes of common disease and disabilities across the globe.

If meeting basic survival needs can truly make a difference for the world's population then how can international law play a constructive role? What is required is an innovative way of structuring international obligations. A vehicle such as a Framework Convention on Global Health (FCGH) could powerfully improve global health governance. Such a Framework Convention would commit States to a set of targets, both economic and logistic, and dismantle barriers to constructive engagement by the private and charitable sectors. It would stimulate creative public/private partnerships and actively engage civil society stakeholders. A FCGH could set achievable goals for global health spending as a proportion of GNP; define areas of cost effective investment to meet basic survival needs; build sustainable health systems; and create incentives for scientific innovation for affordable vaccines and essential medicines.

This article first examines the compelling issue of global health equity, and inquires whether it is fair that people in poor countries suffer such a disproportionate burden of disease and premature death. Second, the article explains a basic problem in global health: why health hazards seem to change form and migrate everywhere on the earth. Third, the article inquires why governments should care about serious health threats outside their borders, and explores the alternative rationales: direct health benefits, economic benefits, and improved national security. Fourth, the article describes how the international community focuses on a few high profile, heart-rending, issues while largely ignoring deeper, systemic problems in global health. By focusing on basic survival needs, the international community could dramatically improve prospects for the world's population. Finally, the article explores the value of international law itself, and proposes an innovative mechanism for global health reform - a Framework Convention on Global Health.

The article suggests a broadened view of what should be taught as legal process - beyond conventional civil procedure to many more forms of human legal and political processes. If process is the human bridge between justice and peace then we much teach about both kinds of processes - those seeking justice and those seeking peace; hopefully they can both be accomplished.

I congratulate the organizers of this year's three-part lecture series for choosing the topic "Risk and the Law." The topic is timely, full of rich possibilities for analysis, and as contentious as any matter in legal academics today. If you attend all of the lectures - mine, plus those by Professors Simon and Sunstein - I believe you will begin to see why issues of risk are so important and so hard, and I am certain you will come away with quite different lessons from each of us. Mine, of course, will be the least controversial.

I have always believed that a life worth living includes two necessary components: passion and connection. I experience those components both in my work and in my personal life. I love the passion I find in my work - both in my advocacy efforts to advance justice in the world and in the teaching through which I try to pass on to others whatever skills and wisdom I have accumulated over the years. And I love the passion I find in my personal life, in my efforts to explore and commit to the joys and challenges of intimacy and friendship.

The connections that I treasure track my various passions: starting from the connections I experience in an intimate relationship and in personal friendships, to the connections I have with colleagues, students, and mentors. Judge Frank Morey Coffin is a remarkable and joyous connection in my life. It is the connection of a mentor, of a teacher, and of a friend. And in the example of his life, Judge Coffin has demonstrated his passion for making the world a better place, for imparting wisdom (and jibes and practical jokes) to his students, and for maintaining a full and happy home life.

I have been enriched by this connection with Judge Coffin - both enriched with little pearls of wisdom and with great peals of laughter - and I am everlastingly grateful for those riches.

I can think of no finer way to honor that connection, and to pay back some of the amazing gifts showered on me by Judge Coffin, than to deliver (and publish) the Coffin lecture on law and public service, which encompasses so many of the passions and connections of my life. And on this occasion of the Tenth Annual Coffin Lecture, I feel I stand here as a representative of every former, and current, law clerk of Judge Coffin, all of whom, I know, would echo my gratitude and joy for their connection to the judge.

Our question here is: does compassionate conservatism have a heart? Almost five years have passed since the 1996 welfare law was enacted. So, we might ask, where are we and where are we going, and even more to the point, what are the prospects for better policy and outcomes on poverty generally? One American child in six is still poor, and the number of families in economic difficulty is much larger than that. That is the context in which we have a new president and a new administration.