ABOUT

Martin Flaherty is a Visiting Professor at the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton as well as Columbia Law School and Barnard College. He is also Leitner Family Professor of International Human Rights Law at Fordham Law School where he is also Founding Co-Director of the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice.


Martin S. Flaherty

150 West 62nd Street, Room 7-128
Leitner Center for International Law and Justice
New York, NY 10023
Phone: (212) 636-6857
Fax: (212) 636-6775 E-mail: mflaherty17@yahoo.com

Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
Princeton Center for Human Values
Leitner Center for International Law and Justice
Barnard College
Columbia Law School

Martin S. Flaherty is Leitner Family Professor of Law and Founding Co-Director of the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School.  He is also a Visiting Professor at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, where he was Fellow in the Program in Law and Public Affairs and a Visiting Professor at the New School in New York. Professor Flaherty has taught at China University of Political Science and Law and the National Judges College in Beijing, and co-founded the Rule of Law in Asia Program at the Leitner Center as well as the Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers, an independent NGO on which he serves as Vice Char: http://www.csclawyers.org. He has also taught at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, Queen’s University Belfast, Columbia Law School, Cardozo School of Law, St. John's University School of Law, the New School, and Barnard College. Previously Professor Flaherty served as a law clerk for Justice Byron R. White of the U.S. Supreme Court and Chief Judge John Gibbons of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Flaherty received a B.A. summa cum laude from Princeton, an M.A. and M.Phil. from Yale (in history) and a J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he was Book Reviews and Articles Editor of the Columbia Law Review. For the Leitner Center, Human Rights First, and the New York City Bar Association, he has led or participated in human rights missions to Northern Ireland, Turkey, Hong Kong, Mexico, Malaysia, Kenya, Romania and China. He is a former the Chair of the Council on International Affairs of the New York City Bar Association and of the Committee on International Human Rights.  He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Flaherty's publications focus upon constitutional law and history, foreign affairs, and international human rights and appear in such journals as the Columbia Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Michigan Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, Constitutional Commentary, the Harvard Journal of Law and Policy, the Harvard Human Rights Journal, and Ethics & International Affairs.   Selected publications include: “Executive Power Essentialism and Foreign Affairs” [with Curtis Bradley], Michigan Law Review; “The Most Dangerous Branch,” Yale Law Journal; and “History ‘Lite’ in Modern American Constitutionalism,” Columbia Law Review. He has appeared or been quoted in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, The Daily News, Newsday, the PBS Newshour, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and Fox. He is the author of the Restoring the Global Judiciary: Why the Supreme Court Should Rule in Foreign Affairs (Princeton University Press, 2019).

EXPERIENCE

Current

Fordham Law School, New York, NY, 1989-90, 1991-
Leitner Family Professor of International Human Rights
Founding Co-Director, Leitner Center for International Law and Justice

Visiting & Adjunct Positions

Domestic
Princeton University, School of Public & International Affairs, 2003-
Barnard College, Columbia University, 2016-
Cardozo School of Law, New York, NY, Summer 2009, 2010, 2012
Columbia Law School, New York, NY, 2011, 2013
New York Law School, New York, NY, 2010, 2017
The New School , New York, NY, 2009
St. John’s University School of Law, New York, NY, 2010, 2013-15

Foreign
China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing, Spring 1999
Ford Foundation Grantee

National Judges College, Beijing, Spring 1999
Ford Foundation Grantee

Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea, Summer 2006-08
Visiting Professor in Human Rights, SKKU/Fordham Summer Program

The Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, Summer 2001
Visiting Professor in Human Rights, Queen’s/UCD/Fordham Summer Program

Previous

Law Clerk to Hon. Byron R. White
Supreme Court of the United States, October Term 1990

Law Clerk to Hon. John J. Gibbons
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, 1988-89

EDUCATION

Columbia Law School

J.D. 1988, Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, 1985-88
Book Review & Articles Editor, Columbia Law Review

Yale University

History Department
M.Phil, with distinction, 1987; M.A. 1982
Ph.D. Candidate; Dissertation: "Dividing Government Against Itself: Separation of Powers, Federalism, Foreign Affairs, and History"

Trinity College Dublin

Ireland
ITT/Fulbright Fellow, 1982-83

Princeton University

B.A. (history), summa cum laude, 1981

HUMAN RIGHTS MISSIONS

China, 2008 (for New York City Bar Association)

Romania, 2005 (with Romani Kris)

Kenya, 2004 (with Family Planning of Kenya)

Malaysia, 2002 (with Suara Rakyat Malaysia/SUARAM)

Northern Ireland, 2001 (with the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights)

Mexico, 2000 (with the Centro de Derechos Humanos Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez)

Hong Kong, 1999 (with the Association of the Bar of the City of New York)

Turkey, 1998 (with the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights)

Northern Ireland, 1996 (with the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights)

Northern Ireland, 1992 (with the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights)

BOARD AND OFFICER POSITIONS

Chair, Council on International Affairs, New York City Bar Association, 2015-

Founding Vice Chair, Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers, www.cscl.org, 2010- 

Board Member, American Association of the Commission of International Jurists, www.aaicj.org, 2008-

Life Member, Council on Foreign Relations, 2006-

Chair, Committee on International Human Rights, New York City Bar Association, 2001-03

AWARDS AND HONORS

Program in Law and Public Affairs Fellowship (LAPA), Princeton University, 2003-04

Ford Foundation Grant, 1999

ITT/Fulbright Fellowship, 1981-82

C.O. Joline Prize, Princeton, 1981 (best senior thesis in American history)

New Jersey Society of Colonial Wars Prize, Princeton, 1981 (best senior thesis in colonial American history)

Koren Prize, Princeton, 1980 (best average in history, junior year)

MEDIA

The New York Times, The Boston Globe, New York Daily News, New York Post, Knight-Ridder News Service, Apple Daily (Hong Kong), Associated Press, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, Court TV, Fox News, BBC, National Public Radio, Arise TV,ABC Radio Network, Bloomberg Radio Network, WABC-TV (New York), WCBS-TV (New York), WNBC-TV (New York), WPIX-TV (New York), UPN-9 (New York), WABC Radio (New York), WOR Radio (New York)

COURSES TAUGHT

Civil Procedure

Comparative Federalism 

Constitutional Law

International Human Rights Law

International Human Rights and Democratic Theory

International Human Rights and Development

International Human Rights Advocacy

Legal History

Professional Responsibility

Public International Law

Rule of Law and Civil Society in China

U.S. Foreign Relation Law

ADMISSIONS AND ASSOCIATIONS

Supreme Court of the United States

New York Bar

New Jersey Bar

Institute of Early American History and Culture

Organization of American Historians

American Legal History Association

American Society of International Law