The dean and faculty of Pace Law School
cordially invite you to

The Eleventh Annual Lloyd K. Garrison Lecture on Environmental Law

Presented by
Cass R. Sunstein
Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence
 The University of Chicago Law School

"Irreversible and Catastrophic:
Global Warming, Terrorism, 
and Other Problems"

Monday, April 25, 2005
5:00 P.M.

Robert B. Fleming Moot Courtroom
Pace Law School
78 North Broadway
White Plains, New York

A reception with Cass Sunstein will be held following the lecture.

Because risks are all on sides of social situations, it is not possible to be globally "precautionary." Hence the Precautionary Principle – an influential idea for environmental protection – runs into serious conceptual difficulties. Any precautions will themselves create hazards of one or another kind. But some risks are potentially irreversible and catastrophic, and for such risks, it seems sensible to take extra precautions. Hence the Precautionary Principle might be refined as the Irreversible Harm Precautionary Principle or the Catastrophic Harm Precautionary Principle. When a harm is irreversible, and when government lacks information about its size and likelihood, it makes sense to purchase an "option" to prevent the harm at a later date. This idea results in the Irreversible Harm Precautionary Principle. And when probabilities cannot be assigned to catastrophic outcomes, it is sensible to avoid the worst-case scenario. This idea produces the Catastrophic Harm Precautionary Principle.  Professor Sunstein will address, among other things, the problem of global warming in the context of the Catastrophic Harm Precautionary Principle.

Directions
About the Lecture
About the Speaker