Charles Norchi
Director, Center for Oceans & Coastal Law
Charles H. Norchi is the Benjamin Thompson Professor of Law, director of the Center for Oceans & Coastal Law, and a faculty member of the Climate Change Institute of the University of Maine. He teaches International Law, Oceans Law and Policy, International Human Rights, Maritime Law and Arctic Law, Science, and Policy. His research interests are public international law, Arctic law and climate change, international law of the sea, and policy sciences.
Professor Norchi has served as chair of the Admiralty and Maritime Law Section of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS), the Fulbright-Ministry of Foreign Affairs Arctic Scholar in Iceland, as visiting professor at City University of Hong Kong School of Law and at Peking University School of Law, as human rights fellow at Harvard Law School, as research fellow in the Center for Public Leadership in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and as Myres S. McDougal Fellow at Yale Law School. He is co-chair of the Arctic Futures Institute, a member of the American Polar Society, and serves on the Boards of the World Affairs Council of Maine, the Harvard Club in Maine, Journal of the North Atlantic and Arctic, and the International Association of Maritime Port Executives (IAMPE). He is a contributing editor of Global Geneva, and a fellow of the Explorers Club, the Royal Geographic Society, the World Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also the current president of the Society of Policy Scientists.
Professor Norchi holds an A.B. from Harvard College, a J.D. from Case Western Reserve University Law School, and an LL.M. and a J.S.D. from Yale Law School.
Selected Publications
The Hindu Kush Himalaya Water Tower in a Warming World, Global Geneva (with Paul A. Mayewski and Alexander More) (August 2021).
An Arctic Treaty in an Age of Contagion?, Journal of the North Atlantic and Arctic (June 2020). [JOANNA]
COVID-19 and Climate Change: The Planet’s Twin Crises, Global Geneva (with Paul A. Mayewski) (May 2020). [GLOBAL GENEVA]
Law as Strategy: Thinking Below the State in Afghanistan, 95 INT’L L. STUD. 362 (2019).[PDF]
The Arctic: Law, Science, and Policy, 22 OCEAN & COASTAL L. J. 97 (2017) (with Paul Mayewski). [PDF]
The Arctic in the Public Order of the World Community, 22 OCEAN & COASTAL L. J. 5 (2017). [PDF]

Portland, ME 04101
Education
Current Courses
- Arctic Law, Science and Policy
- Doctorate I
- Doctorate II
- Doctorate Research Colloquium
- Graduate Research Colloquium
- International Human Rights
- International Law
- Maritime Law
- Ocean & Coastal Law Journal
- Oceans Law & Policy
Research Interests
- Arctic Law and Climate Change
- Law of the Sea
- Policy Sciences
- Public International Law
In the Media
- Geopolitics of the Arctic: The Camden Conference Discusses the Arctic – A Region in Peril (Maine Calling)
- Twin Crises: Coronavirus and Climate Change (Who. What. Why.)
- An Arctic Treaty in an Age of Contagion? (Journal of the North Atlantic and Arctic)
- COVID-19 and climate change: the planet’s twin crises (Global Geneva)
- Law in Afghanistan: The Crooked Path from Custom to Code (Global Geneva)
