Paul W. Kahn

Paul W. Kahn (born 1952) is the Robert W. Winner Professor of Law and the Humanities at Yale Law School and the director of the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights.

Education Kahn received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Chicago in 1973, his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1977, and his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1980. It unites the figure of the soldier (who sacrifices for the nation) with the figure of the parent (who sacrifices for the child), and by doing so, it ties public meaning and private meaning together. A legal order for which one would not be willing to sacrifice has no claim to ultimate significance—or legitimacy. In this vein, much of Kahn's work has focused on demonstrating the inability of liberal political theory to provide a satisfying account of law.

In its emphasis on "sacrifice", and on the limitations of liberalism, Kahn's project bears some similarities to that of Giorgio Agamben.

On May 6, 2022, The Hill published an opinion by Kahn in which he argues that the originalist position regarding Roe v. Wade errs by purporting that their interpreted "truth of the law" should be more important than "the rule of law" and that thereby, the originalist position does not reach the standard needed to justify overruling the opinion.

Works Legitimacy and History: Self-government in American Constitutional Theory, Yale University Press, 1993 The Reign of Law: Marbury v. Madison and the Construction of America, Yale University Press, 1997 The Cultural Study of Law: Reconstructing Legal Scholarship, University of Chicago Press, 1999 Law and Love: The Trials of King Lear, Yale University Press, 2000 Putting Liberalism in its Place, Princeton University Press, 2005 Out of Eden: Adam and Eve and the Problem of Evil, Princeton University Press, 2007 Sacred Violence: Torture, Terror, and Sovereignty, University of Michigan Press, 2008 Political Theology: Four New Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, Columbia University Press, 2011 Finding Ourselves at the Movies: Philosophy for a New Generation, Columbia University Press, 2013 Making the Case: The Art of the Judicial Opinion, Yale University Press, 2016 Testimony, Cascade Books, 2021

Personal life Kahn is married to Catherine Iino, former First Selectman of Killingworth, Connecticut. They have two children.