Benjamin Kaplan was an American copyright scholar and jurist. He was also notable as "one of the principal architects" of the Nuremberg trials.

Kaplan grew up in the South Bronx

South Bronx

The South Bronx is an area of the New York City borough of The Bronx. The neighborhoods of Tremont, University Heights, Highbridge, Morrisania, Soundview, Hunts Point, and Castle Hill are sometimes considered part of the South Bronx....

, graduating from DeWitt Clinton High School at the age of 14. He then attended City College

City College of New York

The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...

, graduating in 1929 at the age of 18, and Columbia Law School

Columbia Law School

Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, is one of the oldest and most prestigious law schools in the United States. A member of the Ivy League, Columbia Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Columbia University in New York City. It offers the J.D., LL.M., and J.S.D. degrees in...

 in 1933, and engaged in private practice until 1942 when he joined the Army.

In 1945, while a Lieutenant Colonel

Lieutenant colonel

Lieutenant colonel is a rank of commissioned officer in the armies and most marine forces and some air forces of the world, typically ranking above a major and below a colonel. The rank of lieutenant colonel is often shortened to simply "colonel" in conversation and in unofficial correspondence...

 in the Army, Kaplan joined the prosecution team developing the case against the Nazi war criminals. Kaplan supervised the research and developed legal strategies for the case. In 1947 he joined the faculty at Harvard Law School.

Kaplan co-wrote the first casebook on copyright, with Yale Law School

Yale Law School

Yale Law School, or YLS, is the law school of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Established in 1824, it offers the J.D., LL.M., J.S.D. and M.S.L. degrees in law. It also hosts visiting scholars, visiting researchers and a number of legal research centers...

 Professor Ralph Brown in 1960. As the Royall Professor of Law at Harvard Law School

Harvard Law School

Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...

, 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. Kaplan also served on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is the highest court in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The SJC has the distinction of being the oldest continuously functioning appellate court in the Western Hemisphere.-History:...

 from 1972–1981 and later on the Massachusetts Appeals Court

Massachusetts Appeals Court

The Massachusetts Appeals Court is the intermediate appellate court of Massachusetts. It was created in 1972 as a court of general appellate jurisdiction...

.

Among Kaplan's students at Harvard were future U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Ginsburg was appointed by President Bill Clinton and took the oath of office on August 10, 1993. She is the second female justice and the first Jewish female justice.She is generally viewed as belonging to...

 and Stephen Breyer

Stephen Breyer

Stephen Gerald Breyer is an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1994, and known for his pragmatic approach to constitutional law, Breyer is generally associated with the more liberal side of the Court....

, the latter of whose views on copyright appear to have been influenced by those of Judge Kaplan. Among his former law clerks are the influential scholar Cass Sunstein

Cass Sunstein

Cass R. Sunstein is an American legal scholar, particularly in the fields of constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, and law and behavioral economics, who currently is the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration...

 and First Amendment

First Amendment to the United States Constitution

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...

 attorney Marjorie Heins

Marjorie Heins

Marjorie Heins is an activist, writer, and founder of the Free Expression Policy Project , a U.S. based organization dedicated to exploring challenges to free expression from censorship, media regulation, and intellectual property laws...

.

Kaplan was married to Felicia Lamport Kaplan (m. 1942, d. 1999), a political satirist and writer of light verse. The couple had two children. Kaplan died of pneumonia in his Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...

home on August 18, 2010 at 99 years old.