Jeffrey Kahn

Headshot of Jeffrey  Kahn, faculty member at ҽDedman School of Law.

University Distinguished Professor, Justice John and Lena Hickman Distinguished Faculty Fellow, Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor and Professor of Law

Full-time faculty

Email

jkahn@smu.edu

Jeffrey Kahn is University Distinguished Professor, the Justice John and Lena Hickman Distinguished Faculty Fellow, Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor, Professor of Law, and formerly Robert G. Storey Distinguished Faculty Fellow and Gerald J. Ford Research Fellow at ҽDedman School of Law. He was a resident in Norway during the 2017-2018 academic year as a Fulbright Research Scholar at the PluriCourts Centre of Excellence in the Faculty of Law at the University of Oslo. He was an O’Brien Research Fellow in Residence at McGill University Faculty of Law in fall 2013 and Visiting Professor of Law at Washington & Lee School of Law in spring 2014. In spring 2025, he will be a Research Visitor at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at Oxford University.

Professor Kahn teaches and writes on American constitutional law, administrative law, Russian law, human rights, and counterterrorism. In 2007-2008, he received the Maguire Teaching Fellow Award from the Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility at ҽfor his seminar, “Perspectives on Counterterrorism.” In 2010, he received SMU’s Outstanding Faculty Award, a university-wide award given each year to a junior, tenure-track faculty member for excellence in teaching, curricular development, and scholarship. He received the Law School's Excellence in Teaching Award in 2011, 2017, and 2021.

Professor Kahn is the author of MRS. SHIPLEY'S GHOST: THE RIGHT TO TRAVEL AND TERRORIST WATCHLISTS (, 2013, paperback edition 2014), and co-author of the casebook NATIONAL SECURITY LAW AND THE CONSTITUTION (Aspen, 3d ed. forthcoming 2025). Among other publications, his articles have appeared in the UCLA Law ReviewMichigan Law ReviewVirginia Journal of International Law, William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, and the peer-reviewed, American Journal of Comparative Law, European Journal of International Law, and the Journal of National Security Law and Policy. His blog posts have been featured on Lawfare, Just Security, and Concurring Opinions and his op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, International Herald Tribune, and Dallas Morning News. He testified as an expert witness for the successful plaintiff in Ibrahim v. DHS (N.D. Cal., Dec. 4, 2013), to date the only No-Fly List case to be decided at the trial stage.

His work on Russian law has been  of the New York Times and published in various law reviews as well as the peer-reviewed journals Post-Soviet Affairs, Problems of Post-Communism, Russian Politics, and the Review of Central and East European Law. His latest research has focused primarily on the influence in Russia of the European Convention on Human Rights. In 2011, Russian President Dmitrii Medvedev’s Human Rights Council asked him─the one American among six other experts from Russia, one from Germany, and one from the Netherlands─to write an expert report on the second conviction of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. Professor Kahn described this work and its repercussions in an .  He has submitted briefs to the European Court of Human Rights and the Russian Constitutional Court and worked with the Clooney Foundation for Justice in cases concerning human rights and fair trials in Russia.

He is a graduate of Yale College, Oxford University, and the University of Michigan Law School. His first book, based on that dissertation, was published by  while he was a law student. During law school, he also served as a lecturer on European human rights law at summer training programs in Moscow for Russian lawyers sponsored by the Council of Europe. After law school, he was a law clerk to the Honorable Thomas P. Griesa of the United States District Court for the ҽDistrict of New York. He served as a trial attorney in the Civil Division, United States Department of Justice, from October 2003 until April 2006.

At ҽhe was a founding member of the Advisory Board for the . ҽis the first university in the South, and one of only seven in the country, to offer an academic major in human rights. 

Area of expertise

  • U.S. Constitutional Law
  • Russian Law
  • National Security Law
  • International Human Rights Law
  • European Convention on Human Rights
  • Administrative Law

Education

B.A., Yale University
M.Phil., Oxford University
D.Phil., Oxford University
J.D., University of Michigan Law School

Courses

Constitutional Law
Administrative Law
Legislation and Regulation
Perspectives on Counterterrorism (Seminar)
European Convention on Human Rights (Seminar)

Books

 (with Geoffrey Corn & Jimmy Gurulé, 2017; with Geoffrey Corn, Jimmy Gurulé & Gary Corn, 2d ed., Aspen 2021)

 (University of Michigan Press 2013)

 (Oxford University Press 2002)

Articles

The Origins of Russian Membership in the Council of Europe and the Seeds of Russia's Expulsion, 14 Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law 1 (2024)
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Russia, Ukraine, and the Challenge of Wartime Accountability, 56 Texas Tech Law Review 1 (2024)
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Russia in the Council of Europe: A Difficult Relationship, 9 Russian Politics 1 (2024)

The Irony of British Human Rights Exceptionalism, 1948-1998, 71 American Journal of Comparative Law 657 (2023)

The 'Anti-Deference' Device: Article 18 of the European Convention on Human Rights, 31 Journal of Transnational Law & Policy 117 (2021-2022)
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The Relationship between the European Court of Human Rights and the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation: Conflicting Conceptions of Sovereignty in Strasbourg and St. Petersburg 30 European Journal of International Law 933 (2019)

The Rule of Law Under Pressure: Russia and the European Human Rights System 44 Review of Central and East European Law 275 (2019) (co-guest editor)

The Unreasonable Rise of Reasonable Suspicion:  Terrorist Watchlists and Terry V. Ohio, 20 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 383 (2017)
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Very Like A Whale: Analogy & the Law, 13 Law, Culture & the Humanities 335 (2017)
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"Protection and Empire": The Martens Clause, State Sovereignty, and Individual Rights, 56 Virginia Journal of International Law (2016)
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The Nacirema Revisited, 67 ҽLaw Review 807 (2014)
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Freedom of Expression in Post-Soviet Russia, 18 UCLA Journal of International Law & Foreign Affairs 1 (2013)
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The Case of Colonel Abel, 5 Journal of National Security Law & Policy (2011)
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The Extraordinary Mrs. Shipley: How the United States Controlled International Travel before the Age of Terrorism 43 Connecticut Law Review 819 (2011)
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Report on the Verdict against M.B. Khodorkovsky and P.L. Lebedev, 4 Journal of Eurasian Law 321 (2011)
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Zoya's Standing Problem, or, When Should the Constitution Follow the Flag?, 108 Michigan Law Review 673 (2010)
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No-Limit Texas Hold’em, or, The Voir Dire in Dallas County, 13 Green Bag 2D 383 (2010)
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Ten Questions on National Security (invited essay), 36 William Mitchell Law Review Journal of the National Security Forum 5041 (2010)
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The Unification of Law in the Russian Federation (with A. Trochev & N. Balayan), 25 Post-Soviet Affairs 310 (Oct.-Dec. 2009)
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Vladimir Putin & the Rule of Law in Russia, 36 Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law 511-58 (2008)
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Russia’s Criminal Procedure Code Five Years Out, (with William Burnham) 33 Review of Central & East European Law 1 (2008)
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International Travel and the Constitution, 56 UCLA Law Review 271 (2008)
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The Search for the Rule of Law in Russia, 37 Georgetown Journal of International Law 353 (2006)
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Russia’s ‘Dictatorship of Law’ and the European Court of Human Rights, 29 Review of Central & East European Law 1 (2004)
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Russian Compliance with Articles Five & Six of the European Convention of Human Rights as a Barometer of Legal Reform & Human Rights in Russia, 35 Michigan Journal of Law Reform 641-94 (2002) (translated into  as Кан Джеффри. Исполнение Россией ст. 5 и 6 ЕКПЧ как показатель соблюдения прав человека //Российский бюллетень по правам человека. № 17 (2003))
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The Parade of Sovereignties: Establishing the Vocabulary of the New Russian Federalism, 16 Post-Soviet Affairs 58 (2000)
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Book chapters

An Official Visit, in 355-358 (Silkenat & Libby eds. 2021)

Hybrid Conflict and Prisoners of War: The Case of Ukraine, in COMPLEX BATTLESPACES: THE LAW OF ARMED CONFLICT AND THE DYNAMICS OF MODERN WARFARE 191-221 (Oxford University Press 2019) 

Свобода СМИ: краткая и незаконченная история из Америки, КАК ПРИНЕСТИ ПРАВА ЧЕЛОВЕКА ДОМОЙ: ЗАЩИТА ПРАВ ЧЕЛОВЕКА В НАЦИОНАЛЬНЫХ И МЕЖДУНАРОДНЫХ ИНСТАНЦИЯХ 269 (Под ред. Антона Леонидовича Буркова, М., 2018) [Freedom of the Press: A Short and Incomplete History from America, in HOW TO BRING HUMAN RIGHTS HOME: PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS (A.L. Burkov, ed. 2018)]

The Richelieu Effect: The Khodorkovsky Case and Political Interference with Justicein  231 (Cambridge University Press 2018)

Four chapters (on history, separation of powers, prevention detention, and freedom of the press), in NATIONAL SECURITY LAW AND THE CONSTITUTION (Aspen/Wolters Kluwer 2017) (with Geoffrey Corn & Jimmy Gurule)

Terrorist Watchlists, in 71 (Cambridge University Press 2017)
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The Law is a Causeway: Metaphor & the Rule of Law in Russia, in  (Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law & Justice, Vol. 38) 229 (Silkenat, Hickey, & Barenboim eds. 2014)
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 in  (Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law & Justice, Vol. 28) 355 (Halberstam & Reimann eds. 2014) (with Trochev & Balayan)

The Rule-of-Law Factor, in INSTITUTIONS, IDEAS AND LEADERSHIP IN RUSSIAN POLITICS  159 (Palgrave Macmillan 2010)
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Adversarial Principles and the Case File in Russian Criminal Procedure, in RUSSIA & THE COUNSEL OF EUROPE: TEN YEARS AFTER 107 (Palgrave Macmillan 2010)
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Presentation of Jeffrey Kahnin THE RUSSIAN CONSTITUTION AT FIFTEEN: ASSESSMENTS & CURRENT CHALLENGES TO RUSSIA'S LEGAL DEVELOPMENT 54 (Dresen & Pomeranz eds., Occasional Paper #304, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2010)
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Комментарий, Верховенство права и проблемы его обеспечения в правоприменительной практике (Москва: Издательство «Статут», 2009)

Putin’s Federal Reforms: A Legal-Institutional Perspective, in BEYOND THE GARDEN RING: DIMENSIONS OF RUSSIAN REGIONALISM 73 (Kivinen & Pynnöniemi eds., Kikimora 2002)
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What Is The New Russian Federalism?, in CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN POLITICS: A READER 374 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2001)
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Федерализм и федератция, and Федерализм и демократия, in Основы теории и практики федерализма: Пособие для студентов высших учебных заведений 9 (Garant 1999)

Federalism, Democracy and Asymmetry: Issues in Comparative Perspective, in FEDERALISM: CHOICES IN LAW, INSTITUTIONS AND POLICY. A COMPARATIVE APPROACH  WITH FOCUS ON POLICY 23 (Garant 1998)

Other publications

Russia, the Council of Europe, and “Ruxit,” or, Why Illiberal Regimes Join International Organizations, 67 PROBLEMS OF POST-COMMUNISM 64 (2020) (with Irina Busygina)

'Unlawful Influence' and the al-Nashiri Military Commission at Guantánamo Bay, 20 Journal of International Peacekeeping 219 (2016)

Media

Voice of America, Interview,  (November 2024)

Law on Film, Interview,  (podcast) (October 2024)

CBS News Texas, quoted in  (January 2024)

Dallas Morning News, Op-Ed,  (September 2023)

CBS News Texas, Interview,  (July 2023)

Wall Street Journal, quoted in  (April 2023)

CBS News Texas, quoted in  (December 2022)

The Washington Postquoted in  (October 2022)

Dallas Morning News, Op-Ed,  (March 2022)

Articles of War, Op-Ed,  (March 2022)

New York Times, Op-Ed,  (July 2016)

Dallas Morning News, Op-Ed,  (July 2016)

Washington Post, Op-Ed, (October 2015)

New York Times, Op-Ed,  (February 2013)