Life and Work

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 was an assistant to Justice White on the U.S. Supreme Court and practiced law in Washington, DC, during which time he was part of the legal team representing Nicaragua at the International Court of Justice.

Books

He is the author of Legitimacy and History: Self-Government in American Constitutional Theory; The Reign of Law: Marbury v. Madison and the Construction of America; The Cultural Study of Law: Reconstructing Legal Scholarship; Law and Love: The Trials of King Lear; Putting Liberalism in its Place; Out of Eden: Adam and Eve and the Problem of Evil; Sacred Violence: Torture, Terror, Sovereignty; Finding 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 Canadian Broadcast Corporation podcast. Listen here https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-myth-of-the-secular-part-5-1.3173005). He received his B.A. from the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. in philosophy and J.D. from Yale.
One of America’s most distinguished political theorists examines what happens when national politics enters a small New England town

Social engagement

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After the 2016 election and, even more urgently, after the 2020 election, many citizens looked at the economic and cultural divides that were causing profound upheavals in American politics and asked, “What is happening to us?” Paul W. Kahn explores these fundamental changes as they manifest in a small New England town-his home for twenty-five years, Killingworth, Connecticut. His investigation grounds a democratic theory that puts volunteerism, not voting, at the center. Without active participation, citizens lose the judgment that comes from working with others to solve real problems. Volunteerism, however, is under existential threat today. Changes in civil society, commerce, employment and public opinion formation have isolated families from each other and their communities. Middle-class families are also living under financial stress, uncertain about their children’s future and without the support of civil society. Local media have disappeared. Residents have no time, information or interest in volunteering. Under these conditions, national polarization enters local politics, which becomes another site of national conflict. To save our democracy, Kahn concludes, we must find ways to match opportunities for participation with the way we live today.