John P. Grant
Professor of Law

Specialty Areas & Course Descriptions

Public International Law, International Human Rights, European Union Law

Academic Credentials

LL.B. First Class Honors 1966 University of Edinburgh, Scotland (Lord President Cooper Prize for the top law graduate of class)
LL.M. 1967 University of Pennsylvania

Professional Background

Professor Grant began his teaching career at the law school at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1967, subsequently moving to the University of Dundee and then the University of Glasgow. At Glasgow he served as Dean of Law for a total of 8 years. While there, he founded and directed the Lockerbie Trial Briefing Unit, analyzing and commenting on the legal aspects of the trial of the two Libyans accused of the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988. He has attended substantial parts of the trial and the whole of the appeal in the case. He created a Web site, published a Lockerbie Trial Handbook (which ran to two editions) and has been a regular print and broadcast commentator on the trial. In 2004, he published The Lockerbie Trial: A Documentary History (Oceana) and is working on a major analysis of the international law dimension to the trial.

Grant has acted as a consultant in legal education and in international law. He was a juvenile judge in Scotland for 10 years. He was editor of Scotland's most prestigious law journal, Juridical Review, from 1988 to 1999. He was a frequent visitor to the law school from 1984, an annual visitor from 1999 to 2003 and a Professor of Law from the fall semester of 2004.

Along with Professor Craig Barker of Sussex Law School in England, Grant has edited an assessment of the landmark Harvard Research in International Law of the 1920s and '30s, published by W.S. Hein in 2007, as well as compiling an accompanying three-volume reprint of the entire Harvard project, also published by W.S. Hein. He is currently working, along with Barker, on a third edition of their Encyclopaedic Dictionary of International Law, due to be published by Oxford University Press in early 2009.