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David Kaye

Clinical Professor of Law
David Kaye

Expertise:

Public international law, international humanitarian law, human rights, international criminal justice, the law governing use of force, and freedom of expression

Background:

David Kaye teaches public international law, human rights law, human rights and technology and directs the International Justice Clinic at UCI Law. A former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, he is the U.S. Independent Expert to the European Commission for Democracy through Law (“Venice Commission”), a member of the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom, and an international board member of ARTICLE 19. In 2025-2026, David was a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania, and in 2023-2024 he was the Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in Public International Law at Lund University, Sweden. He also holds affiliations at Lund’s Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, the Bonavero Institute for Human Rights at the University of Oxford, and the Institute for Information Law at the University of Amsterdam School of Law. He publishes regularly on international law topics, and his 2019 book, Speech Police: The Global Struggle to Govern the Internet (Columbia Global Reports), explores the ways in which companies, governments and activists struggle to define the rules for online expression.

After doing his undergraduate and graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, David joined the U.S. State Department as a lawyer in 1995, serving in Washington, D.C., and The Hague, The Netherlands. In addition to his academic work, he served as the Independent Board Chair of the Global Network Initiative. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Counselor of the American Society of International Law, he has also published essays in such publications as Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Guardian, Reuters, Slate, Foreign Policy, Just Security, Lawfare, Tech Policy Press and The Los Angeles Times.

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Book

  • David Kaye, Speech Police: The Global Struggle to Govern the Internet (Columbia Global Reports 2019).

Articles, Essays, Reviews

  • Climate Disinformation, the Digital Services Act and Freedom of Expression, UC Irvine School of Law Research Paper No. 2026-03 (2026).
  • Foreword: Can International Law Survive? UC Irvine Journal of International, Transnational and Comparative Law (2026).
  • Conspiracy thinking in American politics (with S. Gong et al.), in Politics and the Life Sciences, First View (2026).
  • Democracy in the Digital Age, in De Gregorio et al, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Digital Constitutionalism (2025).
  • Book chapter, “The UN Charter and International Human Rights Law” (pp. 3-24), The Oxford Handbook of the UN Human Rights System, Jared Genser and Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein (eds.) (Oxford Academic 2026)  
  • Co-author, European Commission for Democracy Through Law (Venice Commission)’s “Report on a Rule of Law and Human Rights Compliant Regulation of Spyware, Adopted by the Venice Commission at its 141st Plenary Session (Venice, 6-7 December 2024)” (December 13, 2025) (available here) 
  • “Freedom of Expression’s Crisis of Interpretation,” Journal of Democracy (Oct. 2024) 
  • The United Nations Charter, International Human Rights, and the Hollowness of Sovereignty Claims, Oxford Handbook of Human Rights Advocacy (2023/forthcoming), available at SSRN.
  • A review of Samuel Moyn’s Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War, 117 American Journal of International Law 177 (2023).
  • Online Propaganda, Censorship and Human Rights in Russia’s War Against Reality, 116 American Journal of International Law Unbound 140 (2022).
  • Convergence and Conflict: Reflections on Global and Regional Human Rights Standards on Hate Speech (with Evelyn Aswad), 20 Northwestern Journal of Human Rights 165 (2022).
  • The Troubled World of Hate Speech Regulation (review essay), 21 Journal of Human Rights 110 (2022).
  • Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Elgar Encyclopedia of Human Rights (eds., Nowak et al) (2022).
  • The Spyware State and the Prospects for Accountability, 27 Global Governance 483 (2021).

Reports Submitted as UN Special Rapporteur

  • June 29, 2026
    Presentation: Quelle indivisibilité dans un monde globalisé ? ODD, acteurs économiques, et fragmentation normative,     Colloque Rene Cassin, Strasbourg, France
  • May 5, 2026
    Presentation: A Normative Intervention for Free Speech, Knight Columbia First Amendment Institute, New York
  • April 24, 2026
    Panel Moderator: Authoritarianism, Rule of Law and Human Rights in the United States, Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law, Washington, DC
  • May 11 - 15, 2026
    Expert Panelist: Review of Taiwan's Compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Taipei
  • April 6-7, 2026
    Workshop Convener and Organizer: Reclaiming Freedom of Expression,     Perry World House, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
  • March 19, 2026
    Lecture: Freedom of Expression's Global Crisis,     Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam Law School, Amsterdam
  • March 10, 2026
    Lecture: The Evolution of Digital Regulation and the Protection of Freedom of Expression, European Commission Lunch Series, Brussels
  • February 16-17, 2026
    Panelist: Climate Disinformation and the Digital Services Act, and Closing Session, The DSA and Platform Regulation Conference, University of Amsterdam Law School
  • January 19-20, 2026
    Rapporteur: Venice Commission Mission to Lithuania, Vilnius
  • February 3, 2026
    Lecture: Freedom of Expression in the New Media Landscape, Perry World House, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
  • November 5, 2025
    Panelist:     How is the transformation of the media impacting democracy? World Forum for Democracy, Council of Europe, Strasbourg
  • September 3, 2025
    Testimony:     Europe’s Threat to American Speech and Innovation, House Judiciary Committee, Washington, D.C.
  • September 2025
    Testimony, “Europe’s Threat to American Speech and Innovation,” House Judiciary Committee
  • March 13, 2025
    Presentation, “What Matters to Me and Why,” UC Irvine Office of Inclusive Excellence
  • February 8, 2025:
    Panelist, “The American Election,” and “A Dialogue on War Zones,” UC Irvine Forum for the Academy and the Public 2025’s Annual Conference, “Facts Under Fire: Reporting in Impossible Times”
  • May 4, 2023:
    Panelist: The Future of State Media, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC
  • May 3, 2023
    Panelist: Solving the Threat of Intrusive Spyware    , AccessNow, New York, New York
  • March 29, 2023
    Podcast    : Can the framework of Human Rights Law Help at Home? SpeechMatters Podcast of the UC Free Speech Center
  • February 23, 2023
    Panelist: Content Management and Accountability    , UNESCO Conference: An Internet of Trust, Paris, France