David J. Bederman, an Evaluation of the Contribution of the Conference

• Citation: Vol. 22 No. 1
• Publication year: 2008

AN EVALUATION OF THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE CONFERENCE

David J. Bederman^*

I have to say that the last two and a half days attending this conference has been, for me, an epiphany. What we have been hearing has been at once harrowing, enlightening, humbling, and, finally, inspiring. I am placed in the position, together with Dean James Curran, of evaluating the conference. For me, as an academic international lawyer, the most important benefit has been to hear the words and insights of doctors, public health professionals, and social scientists on what I fervently believe is the most compelling challenge of our generation, which is to protect the health of vulnerable populations. The emphasis has been, quite rightly, on the health of women and children in the developing world. We have also heard a great deal about populations at risk around the world in different contexts, including armed conflict, refugees, and in other situations.

As an academic lawyer, one thing I shall try to do in the few minutes allowed to me is to reflect on what I think is the inadequacy of law and legal institutions in confronting global health problems. I shall also try to chart a way forward both as an action plan and as a research agenda for interdisciplinary cooperation on questions of global public health, especially the health of women and children.

The central paradigm that I have been wrestling with for the last two and a half days was very nicely articulated by President Jimmy Carter and repeated consistently throughout this conference by others, including Bill Foege: we are

202 EMORY INTERNATIONAL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 22 now seeing the tension between top-down change by traditional means of lawmaking and at the same time bottom-up social change by communities, by action leaders, by activists, by individuals on the ground. For me, this dynamic between change being generated from the top down and from the bottom up raises a host of significant issues that I think we must grapple with as we go forward not only in thinking about these issues, but also, much more importantly, in taking action to address them. It is, of course, our prerogative and privilege to be at a university, a great university, one that is, as President Wagner said, "committed not only to inquiry, but also to social change." That is the reason I am here!

As Professor Berman and Professor Gostin have described it, the dynamic that we have been speaking about here is world law, which is distinct from international...