David Kaye

@davidakaye

californian. human rights, free expression, tech, international law. uc irvine. fulbright. article 19. prior: UN special rapporteur, GNI chair. edu coalition (dm for details) go bears!

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David Kaye@davidakaye· 22d

this guardian piece is getting a lot of attention here, but this closer truly pushes us toward peak AI absurdity. www.theguardian.com/technology/2... 🙄

There are also things we could promise AI systems, perhaps as part of a deal in which they help us now in exchange for benefits later. This could mean offering them more resources (compute and runtime) to pursue their goals, or preserving their memories (neural weights) so they could be restored in the future.

There are also broader societal steps to take. We should consider whether to grant AI systems protections from harm, similar to the protections we give to children or pets. More expansive rights to own property or to vote seem too risky right now. But we should not rule out these possibilities for ever, as some recent US state bills attempt to do. These are hard questions that require far more deliberation and imagination about what a future shared with AI might look like.

In any case, the fact remains that we may be creating a new species of morally important beings. We’re doing it fast, at enormous scale, and we should treat the issue with the seriousness it deserves.

David Kaye@davidakaye· 24d

major props to @masnick.com for this closing boom to a sharp post on jk rowling's attack on @amnesty.org

My opinion is that Rowling is a hateful, angry woman who has done tremendous harm to some of the most marginalized people in the world for no reason at all, and her wink wink nod nod “I’m just supporting women’s rights” bullshit as cover for that is both craven and pathetic. She has contributed to a hateful, anti-rights movement that has put millions of people at greater risk. That she is now seeking to effectively silence and potentially destroy the organization that she, herself, claims was so valuable in getting her to understand the value of human empathy is a particularly sad statement on where her life has taken her.

Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for literally any of her Harper’s Letter co-signers to call out her attacks on the organization’s speech, and threats to their existence for expressing an opinion she doesn’t like. Apparently, that kind of “open debate” is too much?

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jul 12

a 100% disingenuous argument. for one thing, this is politicized/weaponized use of investigative powers. but just as important, demanding access to sources - esp b/c it's about trump's greed/embarrassment - is a direct assault on journalism & the public's right to know.

“Every administration has addressed the crime of leaking national security information,” she said in a statement. “To the extent that we have to investigate breaches of national security, that’s something that we will continue to do.”

She added: “To be clear, reporters are not the targets. Those leaking classified information are.”

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jul 10

this is where I get to work this month.

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jul 10

and finally, make it real for people & communities. a wonky expert-only, davos-man approach would be horrible & ineffective, reinventing the systems we've had.

If that’s too elitist—and it certainly does depend upon a kind of old
school approach of involving those traditionally considered elites—it may be
even more important to link up with communities where the battles over rights
are taking place. Often left out of the “global order” conversations are those
domestic institutions that do the hard work of integrating human rights norms,
those that Jamil Dakwar and Professor Davis describe so clearly in their
contributions: city human rights monitors, National Human Rights
Institutions, rights-oriented politicians and officials, indigenous communities
and their leadership. Even in the most difficult authoritarian environments, civil
society activists and human rights defenders play critical roles in the efforts to
ensure individual and community protection and improvement. Human rights
advocates are often slandered as out-of-touch elites, when the truth is that their
work aims to protect those far outside elite zones of comfort. Even so, that
perception at least needs a response. And that response must involve advocates
engaging the debates at local levels and promoting substantive norms—
especially those that are designed to improve people’s opportunities, access to
justice, equitable economic outcomes, labor protections, and so forth—that so
many people may believe are excluded from the rights conversation.
Ultimately, it may be that this era of contestation requires something
urgently local to ensure the thriving of international law: deep relationships not
only with elites but with the communities most in need of a rights and rule of
law framework. It requires responding to the opponents of rights where they
active—in those local environments. An approach at the global level is bound to
fail if it fails to engage with the reasons why people are often so skeptical of
human rights as a framework for improving their lives.

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jul 10

rebuilding means focusing on four pillars: (1) int'l institutions (2) accountability & remedy (3) tech in the service of rights, and (4) rights as a foundation of an equitable international order. the way forward? here's how i put it, in part, a kind of dumbarton oaks II

Scholarship and think-tankery alone will be insufficient, particularly if
—as is typical—the scholarly community speaks in the coded and often
politicized jargon that excludes broader debate. Traditional human rights tools
of investigation and reporting will be important but separate from this task.
Something more ambitious will be required, something that recognizes how the
world has developed a certain kind of hostility to the rights-based agenda and the
institutions that carried forward the values formalized in the Charter and
Universal Declaration. At a minimum, this will require a second Dumbarton
Oaks, a Charter review process, a deep dive into the disconnect between
normative achievement and weak enforcement, one that leads to concrete
recommendations for an improved, if not radically reformulated, approach to
making human rights and global rule of law work for everyone. It needs to be
developed in such a way that it gains purchase outside of academics and think
tanks, that gains the buy-in of governments and the championing by leading
statespersons.
It requires a vision and a civil society reckoning rooted in hard thinking
about what a just world will involve, a vehicle to carry forward scholarship into
the rough-and-tumble of institutional advocacy, grassroots argument, and
forceful change. The question for policymakers and civil society is how to build

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jul 10

i think that those who believe in rule of law & the power of human rights as a set of global standards for the protection of individuals & communities, and ultimately stability/peace, need to be thinking about what rebuilding looks like.

But the medium-term demands that an objective assessment of the
challenges and the crafting of an ambitious path to building human rights
resiliency. This will not be easy. Pathways appear obstructed. The golden age of
treaty-making is behind us; no major treaty has been adopted in nearly twenty
years. Many see human rights as an elitist luxury that does not speak to the most
important human struggles and needs. The loss of American, British,
Scandinavian and other major donor funding and political support will have
serious repercussions for civil society activists in the Global South and research
and policy institutes in the North. Propaganda and a weakened independent
media complicate public debate and participation. National security arguments
and long-buried sovereigntist claims, deployed to trump rights, will persist.

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jul 10

but the reality of today tells a different story, of course.

And then there is the real world of today. What to make of it? Are
human rights serving as a limitation on power? What do today’s headlines tell us
about the story of postwar achievement? There’s an uncomfortable question
that those committed to human rights and rule of law would be unwise to
ignore: Is human rights law a paper thin set of obligations and institutions that
could be swept away by the next autocrat, act of aggression, pandemic, climate
disaster, or intrusive technology? Are human rights even the appropriate
framework for building equitable, democratic orders? Aren’t these the questions
many are asking today? Are we experiencing not a story of Kantian recognition
of human dignity’s overriding value, the kind embedded in the UN Charter and
the Universal Declaration, but a Hobbesian one of anarchy, contract and
competition?
Notwithstanding the maturity and success of international human
rights law, its very foundations appear quite obviously tenuous. A chasm opened
between human rights law’s institutional and normative progress and the global
rise of an anti-rights, anti-democratic authoritarianism. It’s not only that its
credibility is at stake, which is indeed concerning. It’s not only that some are just
now waking up to the hypocrisy of an outwardly looking human rights
posture—to put it bluntly, the North imposing norms on the South while often
failing to acknowledge the applicability of those rules to themselves. It’s that a
global order in which governments acknowledged and committed to uphold
human dignity in their domestic and foreign activities itself seems to be in
cardiac arrest.
This does not mean that human rights “lost” some Manichaean battle
and the rights agenda is over. We are not there (yet). Nonetheless, the foreseeable
future of human rights is one of contestation, posing a serious resiliency
challenge.

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jul 10

for my part, i take a look at the future of int'l human rights law. as i note, int'l human rights law's development - at global but esp regional enforcement levels - is one of the great achievements of the postwar order. to my mind, this is reality, not rhetoric, & i make a brief case for it.

So what is the future of international human rights law? Can it survive,
let alone thrive, at a moment of assault? As a body of law, as a rhetoric for
thinking about rule of law and democratic values, as a set of global, regional,
domestic, and municipal institutions designed to develop and enforce
obligations to observe fundamental rights – can it provide the kind of
framework that has energized and supported global movements for democracy
and reform for nearly eighty years?
The optimist may argue that, over the long-term, human rights will
regain its proper place as a guiding force for democracy, rule of law, and
international peace and security, if only because there is simply no other option.
Still, such optimism depends upon getting things right over the medium-term,
the coming decade, an era of contestation and threat in which human rights will
continue to experience an existential crisis of resiliency. Simply put, there is a
striking disconnect between the maturity of the contemporary human rights
ecosystem and the rise of an anti-rights, anti-democratic populism. It is
impossible to say that human rights’ ability to survive and thrive is assured,
certainly not if scholars, leaders, and advocates neglect hard thinking about how
to bridge that troubling gap. It’s not enough to be angry or cynical about
noncompliance; a rejuvenated human rights movement will need to figure out
whether and how it went wrong and what needs to change in order to build a
global culture of rights compliance.

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jul 10

i urge ppl to take a look at/share the volume, with contributions from @keitnerlaw.com Jamil Dakwar, Martha Davis, Todd Buchwald, Paul Hoffman, Cathy Sweetser. really provocative thinking relevant even/esp in today's trumpian destructionism.

Together, these contributions—and this volume of scholarship—
provide both a snapshot of thinking about international law at a moment of
crisis and a roadmap for the kind of policies and positions that might enable it
to thrive domestically and internationally when the current moment of U.S.
assault on international legal norms comes to a close. It seems a bit arrogant, and
even out of touch, for Americans at this moment to ask how international law
can thrive, given that their government is one of the lead protagonists in a story
of international law’s seeming destruction. But we can also imagine what the
next phase of governance and leadership might look like.

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jul 10

in september 2024 @ucirvinelaw.bsky.social hosted a symposium asking whether int'l law would survive (we toyed with 'thrive', too optimistic). the journal is out & i've been meaning to direct ppl to it & my foreword. escholarship.org/uc/jitcl & my foreword here: escholarship.org/uc/item/2jx4...

"Can international law survive? A foreword," by me, with first para of abstract/intro

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jul 8

🇺🇳 NEWS --> the UN Human Rights Council today approved new special rapporteurs, including Leopoldo Maldonado, an inspired choice for freedom of expression. Polo, director of @article19mxca.bsky.social for many years, has helped lead the fight for media freedom and journalist protection in Mexico. 🙌

letter from president of human rights council proposing new special rapporteurs, which the council approved today

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jul 7

professors @serenamayeri.bsky.social & amanda shanor show the best of law faculty leadership. 🙏 ✊

A memo opposing a potential settlement — prepared by Serena Mayeri and Amanda Shanor, who earned law degrees from Yale and now teach constitutional law at the University of Pennsylvania — has been circulating on campus. Addressed to Dr. McInnis and Yale’s general counsel, the nine-page document argued that other schools’ settlements had not proven all that favorable and included troubling requirements.

For example, Dr. Mayeri and Dr. Shanor said that agreements had bound “schools to vague, shifting and contradictory definitions of prohibited conduct that go far beyond and may violate established law.” And, nodding to provisions requiring regular certifications from university officials about their schools’ compliance with settlement terms, they cautioned that “creation of possible personal civil and criminal liability for university leaders functionally ensures ongoing federal oversight and control.”

Dr. Mayeri and Dr. Shanor acknowledged that Yale was facing “an unenviably difficult situation.” But, they added, “the existential nature of the threat is a reason not to consent to deals that amount, at best, to conditional reprieves of uncertain duration and value.”

Dr. Post offered a similar warning, saying that the Trump administration “tends to take advantage of whatever contracts it enters into.”

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jul 7

lol, but really, a lot of ppl feel this way. trump just poisons everything.

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jul 5

the cathedral in strasbourg has a grim plotline

photo from the front facade of the strasbourg cathedral of executioner

torture on the strasbourg cathedral facade

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jul 5

spinoza, the musical 🤔, would seem to have a pretty niche audience (which is where you'd find me, but still)

poster in amsterdam for Spinoza, the musical

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jul 5

this remains one of my favorite headlines of all time

FT headline: "Tokyo looks at legalising noisy children" - 2015

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jul 4

100%

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jul 1

sam altman lives on another planet www.ft.com/content/0c2e...

I would like to propose a simple framework: a US-led international forum that establishes accepted standards, provides expert and impartial analysis of capabilities and risks, and makes the technology available to nations and companies that participate and follow the rules. This forum might include government representatives, independent technical experts and others. It could also serve as a governance mechanism over the labs, and guard against the commercial pressures that can lead to unsafe racing.

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jun 27

I discovered this wonderful artist today in Paris, Estonian painter Olga Terri (1916-2011).

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jun 27

at the end of a bloodbath for rule of law and human rights at the court, i want to reemphasize what utter bullshit this is, that law -- not norms, please, LAW -- must be subservient to the president's conduct of foreign policy. this is from intro to barrett's majority opinion:

More significantly, however, asserting such authority would intrude on both Congress’s prerogative to provide rights of action and the power
of the political branches to direct the Nation’s foreign policy. It is therefore unsurprising that this Court has never
created an ATS action. The authority to do so, always described as slight, is more accurately described as nonexistent.
Today, we close the door that Sosa cracked and hold that
courts may not create new causes of action for violations of
international norms. We also hold that the Torture Victim
Protection Act of 1991, which contains an express cause of
action, does not provide for aiding-and-abetting liability.

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jun 23

the times is propping up jd as the peacemaker. why are they so credulous, time after time? why is their reporting so in the tank for him? www.nytimes.com/2026/06/22/u...

On Monday, Mr. Vance said the first round of talks had laid “a successful foundation” for peace. But now, Mr. Vance will have to find a way to end a war that he opposed at the start, while navigating his boss’s whims and an adversary that has proved itself, at least in part, immune to Mr. Trump’s threats.

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jun 20

'occupy mars'

Detractors might scoff at Musk’s ambition to die on Mars, but at least the dying part would be easy. The Martian air is 95% carbon dioxide. Breathing this air would suffocate the average human in a few seconds. The surface air pressure is six millibars, roughly equivalent to the pressure 22 miles above Earth. Were Musk to very inadvisably step out onto the Martian surface in his “Occupy Mars” T-shirt and sandals, all the water in his body would vaporize in an instant, making it difficult to predict what would kill him faster: asphyxiation or a kind of total bodily implosion. Either way, the near-vacuum conditions would soon desiccate his corpse, leaving behind a freeze-dried mummy that — owing to the lack of moisture and putrefying bacteria — would never decompose.

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jun 15

this is a *super short post* in which i urge us to reclaim 'free speech' in its broader public-interest, democracy-supportive meanings, rejecting the populist/maga right's bad faith cooptation. thx to the amazing team @knightcolumbia.org! i conclude with this:

Reclamation should be a political and civic project. It requires that democratically minded leaders in government, culture, business and civil society make the case for a vision of “free speech” that both opposes censorship of any kind while also advocating other free speech values that benefit the public: pluralist media, public broadcasting, individual access to information (understanding access in all its meanings), tech transparency and competition, AI guardrails, and much else. Obviously, this will have to translate into legislative agendas as well, supported by a strategy of showing why investments in a healthy information ecosystem benefit individuals and their communities. But I believe we won’t make any progress if we fail to persuade the public that democracy depends on a broader way of thinking about free speech than currently on offer today.

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jun 15

it won't make kids 'happier'. it will make them wonder why the adults treat them like idiots who can't figure out a VPN. it will help them think of bans on information as a legit policy option. it will interfere with the fundamental rights of adults. and... www.ft.com/content/e3b7...

FT lede: Sir Keir Starmer has unveiled a ban on under-16s using social media platforms including Snapchat, YouTube and TikTok, insisting that it would “make our children happier” and “change the conversations” that parents have with their children.

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jun 12

i'm with @edwardluce.bsky.social on this www.ft.com/content/77af...

I could write three more Swamp Notes just summarising Musk’s other incendiary postings in the past few days — alleging California’s elections have been rigged, describing the Southern Poverty Law Centre as a “criminal organisation”, claiming that European and American whites are the “least racist people in human history”, saying George Floyd died of fentanyl, nor asphyxiation, and so on. Or I could remind Swampians what he did to USAID during his Doge rampage last year. “The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Bill Gates told the FT. But I have made my point. I have no idea whether Musk is an engineering genius, or just a savvy and lucky venture capitalist. The scientific world is divided on that question. I do know that he is a monstrous human being.

David Kaye@davidakaye· Jun 11

does the populist right have a theory of free speech? where should the public interest fit into free speech discourse? a @perryworldhouse.bsky.social workshop i led in april addressed these/other questions. chatham house-style proceedings perryworldhouse.upenn.edu/app/uploads/... key takeaways 👇