“Police Policing Police”

The Kleh Lecture featuring Zachary D. Kaufman

Police Policing Police

Professor Zachary D. Kaufman, the William & Patricia Kleh Visiting Professor in International Law at Boston University School of Law, will deliver this year’s Kleh Lecture in International Law.

Police killings of George Floyd and at least 2,218 other Black Americans since 2015 have amplified a racial reckoning and intensified demands for meaningful, overdue police reform. Drawing on laws and lessons stemming from genocide and other atrocity crimes, Professor Kaufman will propose that Congress and state legislatures across the United States enact criminal laws creating a law enforcement officer duty to intervene in their colleagues’ misuse of force. Introducing criminal liability for inaction, Professor Kaufman will contend, could prod officers to stop their peers’ serious misconduct and would promote accountability for those officers who remain bystanders.

During his lecture, Professor Kaufman will explain how bystanders, upstanders, and enablers of the Holocaust play a role in his proposal. Professor Kaufman will conclude by presenting a model statute for a law enforcement officer duty to intervene.

Professor Kaufman’s research and recommendations on this topic will be published this month in his article, Police Policing Police.

Thursday, April 13th, 2023
Barristers Hall, BU School of Law
12:45 – 2:00pm

About our Speaker
Professor Zachary D. Kaufman has joined Boston University School of Law as the William & Patricia Kleh Visiting Professor in International Law for the spring 2023 semester. He is teaching two courses—National Security Law and Transitional Justice—and will deliver the annual Kleh Lecture in International Law on April 13.

Professor Kaufman is on leave from the University of Houston Law Center, where he is associate professor of law and political science and codirector of the Criminal Justice Institute. He has also taught at Stanford Law School, Yale University Department of Political Science, Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, and George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs. In addition, he was a senior fellow at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and held other academic appointments at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, Stanford University, and New York University.

The author or editor of three books and more than 40 articles and book chapters, Professor Kaufman is currently working on his fourth book (under contract with Cambridge University Press), this one on the law and politics of bystanders and upstanders. He has also written for popular outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, Foreign Policy, Forbes, among others, and both of the leading international law blogs (Just Security and Opinio Juris).

Professor Kaufman has served in all three branches of the US government. In the judicial branch, he was a US Supreme Court fellow and clerk to a distinguished BU Law alum, Hon. Juan R. Torruella (’57), on the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. In the legislative branch, he was a Council on Foreign Relations international affairs fellow on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, during which he was a lead architect of both the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act (enacted in January 2019) and the Syrian War Crimes Accountability Act (enacted in August 2018 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act). In the executive branch, he served at the US Departments of Justice and State. He also has served at three international war crimes tribunals: the International Criminal Court (where he was the first American to serve) as well as the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and for the Former Yugoslavia. In the private sector, Professor Kaufman has practiced law at O’Melveny & Myers LLP and worked at Google.

A life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Professor Kaufman is involved in various academic organizations and think tanks. He currently serves as a member of the Yale Law School Association Executive Committee (which provides advice to the law school and its dean), chair of the Association of American Law Schools’ International Human Rights Section, cochair of the American Society of International Law’s Human Rights Interest Group, executive committee member of both the Association of American Law Schools’ Criminal Law Section and National Security Law Section, coorganizer of the Law and Society Association’s Collaborative Research Network (CRN) on Transitional Justice, fellow of the Truman National Security Project, member of Genocide Watch’s board of advisors, and member of the American Political Science Association, International Studies Association, International Association of Genocide Scholars, and International Network of Genocide Scholars.

Professor Kaufman received his JD from Yale Law School, where he was an Olin Fellow, editor-in-chief of the Yale Law & Policy Review, managing editor of the Yale Human Rights & Development Law Journal, articles editor of the Yale Journal of International Law, and cofounder and copresident of Yale Law Social Entrepreneurs. He earned his DPhil and MPhil, both in international relations, from the University of Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He earned his BA in political science from Yale University, where he was the student body president, cocaptain of the Yale Wrestling Team, and an All-American and Runner-up National Champion in the National Collegiate Wrestling Association.

For more information about our speaker, please visit our article in the Record.

Please note that this conversation will be held in person, and also on zoom.

Boston University strives to be accessible, inclusive and diverse in our facilities, programming and academic offerings. Your experience in this event is important to us. If you have a disability (including but not limited to learning or attention, mental health, concussion, vision, mobility, hearing, physical or other health related), require communication access services for the deaf or hard of hearing, or believe that you require a reasonable accommodation for another reason please contact Elizabeth Clancey (lawevent@bu.edu) by March 25th, to discuss your needs.

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