Bio
Brett Max Kaufman is a senior staff attorney in the ACLU’s Center for Democracy working on a variety of issues related to national security, technology, surveillance, privacy, and First Amendment rights. He has litigated cases including ACLU v. Clapper, a challenge the NSA’s mass call-tracking program, Doe v. Mattis, a habeas challenge to the government’s military detention of a U.S. citizen in Iraq, and Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v. Baltimore Police Department, a challenge to Baltimore’s mass aerial surveillance program. He joined the ACLU as a legal fellow from 2012 to 2014, then spent one year as a teaching fellow in the Technology Law & Policy Clinic at New York University School of Law, where he continued to serve as an adjunct professor of law from 2015 to 2022. He returned to the ACLU as a staff attorney in 2015. He is also an adjunct lecturer in law at UCLA School of Law.
Brett is a graduate of Stanford University and the University of Texas School of Law, where he was book review editor of the Texas Law Review and a human rights scholar at the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice. After law school, he spent a year in Israel, serving as a foreign law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Asher Dan Grunis and as a volunteer attorney at Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement. He then clerked for the Hon. Robert D. Sack of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and for Judge Richard J. Holwell and (after Judge Holwell’s resignation) Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Featured work
Jul 3, 2024
Supreme Court Grants Trump, Future Presidents a Blank Check to Break the Law
Apr 8, 2024
The CIA's Long and Dangerous History of Refusing to Answer Absurdly Obvious Questions
Jun 23, 2022
Supreme Court Ruling Rejects the Promise of Miranda Rights
Jan 20, 2022
In Montana, Your Right to Cell Phone Privacy is Up for Debate
Mar 13, 2019
Press Freedom Groups Urge Court to Uphold Core First Amendment Protection in DNC-Russia Lawsuit
Jan 11, 2019
William Barr’s Unsolicited Memo to Trump About Obstruction of Justice
Sep 19, 2018
Trump Is Unshackling America's Drones Thanks to Obama's Weakness
Apr 17, 2018
Who Should Review Michael Cohen’s Files Under the Fourth Amendment?
Oct 16, 2017
The CIA Is Playing Coy About Trump’s First Raid In Yemen