Benjamin Kaplan

Benjamin Kaplan (April 11, 1911 – August 18, 2010) was an American copyright and procedure scholar and jurist. He was also notable as "one of the principal architects" of the Nuremberg trials. And as Reporter to the U.S. Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Civil Rules, he played a pivotal role in the 1966 revisions to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23, which transformed class action practice in the U.S.

Early life and education Kaplan grew up in the South Bronx, graduating from DeWitt Clinton High School at the age of 14. and engaged in private practice until 1942 when he joined the Army. As the Royall Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, he delivered a series of lectures at Columbia Law in 1966. The James S. Carpentier Lectures were then published in 1967 as An Unhurried View of Copyright.

Kaplan was also an influential proceduralist. He co-edited the first process casebook to address the 1938 Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 1952 with Richard Field.

Among Kaplan's students at Harvard were future U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, the latter of whose views on copyright appear to have been influenced by those of Judge Kaplan. Among his former law clerks are the influential scholar Cass Sunstein and First Amendment attorney Marjorie Heins.

Kaplan also served on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court from 1972 to 1981 and later on the Massachusetts Appeals Court.