Benjamin Kaplan

Benjamin Kaplan (April 11, 1911 – August 18, 2010) was an American copyright and procedure scholar and jurist. He was also notable as "one of the principal architects"[1] of the Nuremberg trials.[2] And as Reporter to the U.S. Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Civil Rules, he played a pivotal role in the 1966 revisions to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23, which transformed class action practice in the U.S.[3]

For the history professor, see Benjamin J. Kaplan.

Early years

Kaplan grew up in the South Bronx, graduating from DeWitt Clinton High School at the age of 14.[1] He then attended City College, graduating in 1929 at the age of 18,[1] and Columbia Law School in 1933,[4] and engaged in private practice until 1942 when he joined the Army.[2]

Career

In 1945, while a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army, Kaplan joined the prosecution team developing the case against the Nazi war criminals.[2] Kaplan supervised the research and developed legal strategies for the case.[2] In 1947 he joined the faculty at Harvard Law School.[2]

Kaplan co-wrote the first casebook on copyright, with Yale Law School Professor Ralph Brown in 1960.[5] As the Royall Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, he delivered a series of lectures at Columbia Law in 1966. The James S. Carpentier Lectures were then published in 1967 as An Unhurried View of Copyright.[6]

Kaplan was also an influential proceduralist. In 1952 he co-edited (with Richard Field) the first procedure casebook to address the 1938 federal rules of civil procedure.[7]

Among Kaplan's students at Harvard were future U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, the latter of whose views on copyright appear to have been influenced by those of Judge Kaplan.[8] Among his former law clerks are the influential scholar Cass Sunstein and First Amendment attorney Marjorie Heins.

Kaplan also served on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court from 1972 to 1981 and later on the Massachusetts Appeals Court.[7]

Family

In 1942 Kaplan married to Felicia Lamport (1916 – 23 December 1999), a political satirist and writer of light verse. The couple had two children.[1]

Death

Kaplan died of pneumonia in his Cambridge, Massachusetts home on August 18, 2010 at 99 years old.[5]

Bibliography
  • An Unhurried View of Copyright (1967; Reprinted 2008 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. in hardcover and paperback.

References
  1. David Childs, "Benjamin Kaplan: Judge who played a crucial role in preparations for the Nuremberg trials", The Independent, September 10, 2010.
  2. Bruce Weber, "Benjamin Kaplan, Crucial Figure in Nazi Trials, Dies at 99" (Obituary), The New York Times, 2010-08-24.
  3. Marcus, David (2013). "The History of the Modern Class Action, Part 1: Sturm Und Drang, 1953–1980". Washington University Law Review. 90: 587.
  4. Harvard Law School, "Royall Professor of Law Emeritus Benjamin Kaplan [1911-2010]" (Obituary), 2010-08-19.
  5. Bryan Marquard, "Benjamin Kaplan, 99, esteemed jurist, law professor" (obituary), Boston Globe, 2010-08-20.
  6. See William Patry's Copyright blog discussion of the work, December 27, 2005.
  7. Bush, Jonathan A. (October 26, 2010). "Benjamin Kaplan obituary: US lawyer at the centre of preparations for the Nuremberg trials". The Guardian. Retrieved March 29, 2020.
  8. Breyer, Stephen (2011). "The Uneasy Case for Copyright: A Look Back Across Four Decades" (PDF). George Washington Law Review. 79: 1635.
Legal offices
Preceded by
R. Ammi Cutter		 Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
1972-1981		 Succeeded by
Neil L. Lynch
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