Paul W. Kahn

Robert W. Winner Professor of Law and the Humanities and Director, Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights
(on leave, spring 2025)
Education

J.D., Yale Law School, 1980

Ph.D. (Philosophy), Yale University, 1977

B.A., University of Chicago, 1973

Courses Taught
  • Constitutional Law
  • Human Rights Workshop: Current Issues and Events
  • The Theory and Practice of Human Rights
Paul Kahn

Paul W. Kahn is Robert W. Winner Professor of Law and the Humanities, and Director of the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School. Professor Kahn teaches in the areas of constitutional law and theory, international law, cultural theory and philosophy. Before coming to Yale in 1985, he clerked for Justice White in the United States Supreme Court and practiced law in Washington, D.C., during which time he was on the legal team representing Nicaragua before the International Court of Justice. He is the author of Legitimacy and History: Self-Government in American Constitutional TheoryThe Reign of Law: Marbury v. Madison and the Construction of America;The Cultural Study of Law: Reconstructing Legal ScholarshipLaw and Love: The Trials of King LearPutting Liberalism in its Place; Out of Eden: Adam and Eve and the Problem of EvilSacred Violence: Torture, Terror, SovereigntyFinding Ourselves at the Movies: Philosophy for a New Generation; and Political Theology: Four New Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. (Professor Kahn discusses the book in a podcast from the Canadian Broadcast Corporation. Listen here.) He earned his B.A. from the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. in Philosophy and J.D. from Yale.

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