Martin Flaherty

Martin Flaherty

  • Adjunct Professor of Law
Education

J.D., Columbia Law School, 1988
M.Phil., Yale University, 1987
M.A., Yale University, 1982
Fulbright Fellow, Trinity College, 1982-83
B.A., Princeton University, 1981

Areas of Specialty

Constitutional History
Foreign Affairs
International Human Rights

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 at Barnard College. Professor Flaherty has previously taught at China University of Political Science and Law and the National Judges College in Beijing, Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, Queen’s University Belfast. Professor Flaherty earlier 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 J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he was Book Reviews and Articles Editor of the Columbia Law Review, an M.A. and M.Phil., with distinction, from Yale (in history), and B.A. summa cum laude from Princeton.  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. Professor Flaherty is currently the President of the American Association of the International Commission of Jurists, https://www.aaicj.org, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a legal expert advisor at the Sixth Committee of the United Nations General Assembly.  

Flaherty's scholarly 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 ReviewConstitutional Commentary, the Harvard Journal of Law and Policy, and the Harvard Human Rights Journal.  He has written, appeared, or been quoted in The New York TimesThe Washington Post, The New YorkerThe Boston Globe, The Daily NewsNewsday, the PBS Newshour, CNN, MSNBC, and NPR. He is also the author of the Restoring the Global Judiciary: Why the Supreme Court Should Rule in Foreign Affairs (Princeton University Press, 2019).