Erin Daly & James R. May, Esq.
Erin Daly is Professor of Law at Delaware Law School and is the author of Dignity Rights: Courts, Constitutions, and the Worth of the Human Person (2013), a comparative analysis of case law about the right to human dignity from around the world, and Reconciliation in Divided Societies: Finding Common Ground (2006), both published by University of Pennsylvania Press. She is the director of the Global Network for Human Rights and the Environment.
James R. May, Esq. is Distinguished Professor of Law at Widener University Delaware Law School. May is also Adjunct Professor of Graduate Engineering and inaugural and immediate past Chief Sustainability Officer at Widener University, where he founded the Widener Sustainability Initiative. May has taught 20 courses, founded or co-founded three law centers, two non-profit environmental organizations and a joint degree program, directed an environmental law clinic, and visited at numerous law schools, including Georgetown, Hawai’i, and Vermont. May has also served as affiliated faculty at various institutions across the world, including in Australia, Africa, Brazil and Pakistan. May is also a former national defense engineer, and federal litigator.
May is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of a dozen books, including Constitutional Principles of Environmental Law; Global Environmental Constitutionalism; Environmental Constitutionalism; Judicial Handbook of Global Environmental Constitutionalism and New Frontiers in Global Environmental Constitutionalism. May has delivered more than 300 invited presentations at academic or professional forums since 2009, and chaired or co-chaired a dozen conferences, workshops, colloquia, or symposiums. He has received numerous awards, including Pace University’s highest environmental law recognition award, and was inducted into the Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society in 2017.
At Widener University, May has served on the President’s Executive Team, University Council, and the University Senior Leadership Team, and serves as the co-chair of the University Sustainability Council. At Delaware Law, May has served as co-Chair of the Dean Search, Chair of the Faculty Governance, Tenure Review, and Adjunct Committees, and numerous committees. May was the faculty Advisor of the Widener Law Review, and has coached numerous moot court teams.
Off-campus, May serves or has served on the board of numerous organizations, including the American Bar Association Section on Energy, Environment and Resources, the American College of Environmental Lawyers (ACOEL), the Pennsylvania Environmental Resources Consortium, Delaware GreenWatch, the South African Journal of Environmental Law, and the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society.
May is a Member of Faculty to the National Judicial College, a Fellow of the ACOEL, and a Member of the World Commission on Environmental Law. He has also served as a consultant to the U.S. Embassy on legal education in the Philippines, the Hungarian Embassy and the Moroccan Human Rights Council on constitutional reform, and various governmental, judicial, administrative and academic departments in Brazil, China, Haiti, South Africa, Pakistan and France, and as a Delegate to the UN High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, on behalf of the Centre International de Droit Comparé de l’Environnement. May also serves as a consultant to the United Nations Environment Programme, and has coordinated judicial training workshops in Africa, South America and Asia Pacific in that capacity.
May is a member of the bar in the States of Pennsylvania and Kansas (inactive), several federal district courts and courts of appeal, and the U.S. Supreme Court. He holds his LL.M. from Pace University (Feldshuh Fellow), and his J.D. and B.S. in Mechanical Engineering (Bowman Scholar) from the University of Kansas. May is also a certified engineer who formerly worked in national defense (Q-clearance).
Erin Daly and Jim May are the co-founders and directors of the Dignity Rights Project, an organization that helps to advance the dignity rights of vulnerable around the world in matters relating to environmental health, education, and political participation, among other things. They have written extensively on environmental rights and they are currently at work on several projects about dignity rights, including the first legal casebook on the subject.