Professor of International Law and Comparative Environmental Policy, Dept. of International Relations

Professor of Environmental Law, Policy, and Politics for the Environmental Initiative

John Martin Gillroy is currently Professor of International Law and Comparative Environmental Policy in the Department of International Relations and Professor of Environmental Law, Policy, and Politics for the Environmental Initiative at Lehigh University. He holds graduate degrees in the social sciences from Queen’s University in Canada and The University of Chicago where he also earned a Ph.D. in political theory. He holds graduate law degrees from Vermont Law School in Environmental Law and, most recently, an LL.M. from Wolfson College and the faculty of law at the University of Cambridge in International Law.

At Lehigh University, Professor Gillroy teaches International Law, Comparative Environmental Law and Policy, Introduction To Environmental Studies, International Environmental Law and American Environmental and Natural Resources Law & Policy. He has also taught political philosophy, law, and policy at Trinity College in Hartford where he was Dana Faculty Fellow, Vermont Law School where he was Marsh Teaching Fellow, and at Bucknell University were he held the John D. MacArthur Chair as Director of the Environmental Studies Program.

Professor Gillroy’s research in political and moral theory, environmental policy and comparative/ international law has been published in such journals as The Stanford Journal of International Law; Environmental Law; RISK: Health, Safety & Environment; Ethics and the Environment; Policy Sciences; Policy Studies Journal; Environmental Ethics; and Kant Studien. He is also the author or editor of five books, most recently, Justice & Nature: Kantian Philosophy, Environmental Policy, and the Law. Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press and The Moral Austerity of Environmental Decision Making: Sustainability, Democracy and Normative Argument in Policy and Law, Durham: Duke University Press.

Currently Professor Gillroy is embarking on a six year research project entitled International Law As Hegelian Dialectic: Toward A Synthesis of Justice & Order which involves three arguments about the past, present and future of international law.  Employing the philosophical systems of David Hume, G.W.F. Hegel, and Immanuel Kant an effort will be  made to analyze the theoretical foundations of the international legal system in terms of, first, the strength of the concept of sovereignty in international law,  second, the increasing conflict between ‘process’ (or order) and ‘principle’ (or justice) in current international jurisprudence and, third, the need for a full and contextual application of Kant’s global legal model to assure that the intrinsic value of humanity and nature is reflected in the progressive evolution and codification of international law.