Does Intl. Law Bring Peace? How a Jewish Family Debated the Vietnam War

In the 1960s, a group of Jewish international lawyers set out to end the Vietnam War. The uncle of one of them was Hans Kelsen (1881-1973), one of the most famous legal philosophers of the twentieth century. In this lecture, Samuel Moyn (Yale Law School) follows what happened when Kelsen was asked to join the fray, examining what the debates over the Vietnam War reveal about the relationship between the laws of war, peace, and American Jewish identity.

The Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Lecture Series

Established in 1996, the annual Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Lecture honors the memory of Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff, parents of Eleanor Meyerhoff Katz, wife of Herbert D. Katz, and important philanthropists who supported numerous and enduring civic and Jewish causes. The series brings to Penn preeminent scholars for a campus talk meant to enrich the experience of Katz Center fellows and open up the fellowship theme to the broader university community.

Featuring:

Samuel Moyn is the Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University. Trained in modern European intellectual history, he works on political and legal thought in modern times and on constitutional and international law in historical and current perspective. He is the author of several books, including The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Harvard University Press, 2010); Christian Human Rights (Penn Press, 2015), based on Mellon Distinguished Lectures at the University of Pennsylvania in fall 2014; Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (Harvard, 2018); and Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021). His newest book is , out from Farrar, Straus and Giroux in June 2026.

Cosponsors:

Cosponsored by the Department of Political Science, the Jewish Studies Program, and the Legal History Consortium at Penn Carey Law School.