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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 is a professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, and the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. He is the 2023-2024 Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in Public International Law at Lund University, Sweden, and the U.S. Independent Expert to the European Commission for Democracy through Law (“Venice Commission”). He regularly lectures and has published widely in academic and non-specialist journals on issues related to human rights at domestic and international levels, accountability for serious human rights abuses, international humanitarian law, and the international law governing use of force. 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.

Appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in June 2014, David served through July 2020 as the global body’s principal monitor for freedom of expression issues worldwide, developing a global profile particularly on issues related to technology and human rights. He reported to the UN on COVID-19 and freedom of expression and, in 2019, to the UN General Assembly on online hate speech. His earlier reporting addressed, among other topics, the ways in which Artificial Intelligence technologies implicate human rights issues, the global private surveillance industry and its impact on freedom of expression, growing repression of freedom of expression globally, encryption and anonymity as promoters of freedom of expression, the protection of whistleblowers and journalistic sources, the roles and responsibilities of private Internet companies, and the regulation of online content by social media and search companies. He conducted official missions to Japan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Mexico, Liberia, Ecuador and Ethiopia, and regularly addressed major policy and academic conferences dealing with free expression, technology and media freedom worldwide. Together with the regional monitors of freedom of expression in Europe (OSCE), the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, he joined six Joint Declarations on major contemporary challenges for free expression and independent media worldwide.

After doing his undergraduate and graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, he 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 is the Independent Board Chair of the Global Network Initiative and a Trustee of the global freedom of expression organization, ARTICLE 19. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and former member of the Executive Council 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.

Current Courses:

Advanced International Justice Clinic, Advanced International Justice Clinic WCC, International Justice Clinic

Prior Courses:

Advanced International Justice Clinic, Advanced International Justice Clinic WCC, Federal Courts, International Human Rights, International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, International Justice Clinic, International Legal Analysis

(Log in to view full course descriptions in the UCI Law Course Catalog)

Book

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

Articles, Essays, Reviews

  • 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

  • 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
  • November 10, 2022
    Lecture and Panelist: Current threats to international media freedom    , Practicing Law Institute, New York, New York
  • November 8, 2022:
    Lecture    : Platform Rules, Public Law, Yale Law School, Information Society Project Lecture Series
  • October 27, 2022:
    Testimony    : Intrusive spyware’s threats to human rights, PEGA Committee of the European Parliament, Brussels, Belgium