The Babcock award is given to instructors who teach first-year courses and who promote “inclusion of learning, intellectual rigor and commitment to the highest standards of professional integrity, mentorship, and service.”

Mello, an empirical health law scholar whose research is focused on understanding the effects of law and regulation on health care delivery and population health outcomes, holds a joint appointment at the Stanford University School of Medicine in the Department of Health Policy. At SLS, she teaches Torts to first-year students.

The award was established in 2020 in honor of the first woman appointed to the faculty of Stanford Law School. Babcock, the Judge John Crown Professor of Law, Emerita, passed away in 2020. She was a pioneering lawyer and much-loved law professor, described in her New York Times obituary as “a force for women in the law.”

“Barbara is legendary for bringing her powerful experiences as a legal advocate to her classroom and using them to educate, encourage, and inspire,” said Mello, who also teaches Health Law: Improving Public Health at SLS. “It’s an honor to have my name in the same sentence as hers and it’s deeply meaningful to hear from students what mattered to them as they took their first steps towards becoming a lawyer.”

Statements from SLS students who nominated Mello for the award included: 

“She didn’t just teach me torts. She inspired me to turn my weaknesses into strength. She is an inspiration and a leader to us all, and I find no better candidate for this award than Professor Michelle Mello.”

“Professor Mello commanded an unparalleled level of respect from every student in her classroom that I have never experienced before.”

“The fact that Professor Mello’s student evaluation numbers are always at the top of the charts does not tell the full story,” said SLS Dean George Triantis, Richard E. Lang Professor of Law. “When I hear students rave about her class, they typically speak about how Michelle made them feel challenged but confident. She expects her students to accept responsibility for their learning, but they always know that she supports them and has their backs.”

SLS Professor and Stanford Vice Provost and Dean of Research David Studdert said, “Michelle is a phenom in the classroom. She is deeply committed to her students’ success. I’ve never come across a teacher who is as relentless as she is about continuous improvement – every year, she elicits extensive feedback and spends hours poring over her class evaluations in search of ways to do better.”

Mello is the author of more than 260 articles on medical liability, public health law, the public health response to COVID-19, pharmaceuticals and vaccines, artificial intelligence, data ethics and privacy, biomedical research ethics and governance, and other topics. Her publications appear in medical, health policy, and law journals, and she is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.

About Barbara Babcock

Professor Barbara Babcock was the first woman appointed to the regular faculty, as well as the first to hold an endowed chair and the first emerita at Stanford Law School. Babcock, a civil and criminal procedure scholar, was a pioneer in the study of women in the legal profession. Before joining the Stanford faculty in 1972, Babcock served as the first director of the Public Defender Service of the District of Columbia. On leave from Stanford, she was assistant attorney general for the Civil Division in the U.S. Department of Justice in the Carter administration. Babcock was a four-time winner of the John Bingham Hurlbut Award for Excellence in Teaching at SLS. Among other books, she wrote Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz (Stanford Press, 2011), a biography of the first woman lawyer in the West, and the founder of the public defender movement.