Legacy Gift of the Late Robert M. Kaufman ’57, Longtime Brooklyn Law Trustee, Creates Professorship

Robert M. Kaufman ’57, one of New York’s foremost lawyers in health law, not-for-profit organizations, and election law, was a devoted friend to Brooklyn Law School. He served on the Board of Trustees for 30 years, from 1994 until his death in April 2024 at the age of 94. Now, with a generous legacy gift, Kaufman’s support of the Law School continues with the creation of a new professorship in his name. Adam Kolber, a leading scholar of criminal law, jurisprudence, and ethics who joined the Law School in 2010, has been appointed the inaugural Robert M. Kaufman ’57 Professor of Law. 

“Bob Kaufman’s life embodied the best of Brooklyn Law School’s values: resilience, service, and generosity,” said David D. Meyer, President and Joseph Crea Dean of Brooklyn Law School. “We are proud to honor his remarkable legacy through this professorship, and it is especially fitting that a scholar of Adam Kolber’s caliber and impact will carry his name forward for generations of students.”  

Kaufman’s life was extraordinary. A Holocaust survivor, he left his native Vienna at age eight on the Kindertransport rescue train to England before coming to America with his family in 1939. After earning a master’s degree in economics at New York University, he attended Brooklyn Law School in the evenings, graduating first in his class in 1957. He went on to serve in the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division and as counsel to U.S. Senator Jacob Javits before joining Proskauer Rose in 1961, where he practiced for six decades.  

A legend among his peers and in the greater legal community, Kaufman helped to change the face of health and hospital law. He was responsible for the restructuring of New York not-for-profit hospital groups and for the legislative development of the New York hospital reimbursement system.  

He was also a prominent civic leader: Kaufman served on more than 20 nonprofit boards and government advisory committees, including the Defense Department Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, the Chief of Staff’s Special Commission on the Honor Code (West Point), and the NYC Age-Friendly Commission. 
 
Looking back on his life’s work for a 2013 profile in Law Notes, Kaufman said, “Everything I have done has been about paying back. I was a refugee who came to this country, and I was given a tremendous opportunity. I have to give back, and I have had a great time doing it.” 

Kolber, who will carry Kaufman’s name forward in the classroom, is a noted scholar in bioethics and the law. His work has appeared in the California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Emory Law Journal, Vanderbilt Law Review, and numerous peer-reviewed journals. His highly regarded book, Punishment for the Greater Good, published in 2024 by Oxford University Press, has been praised for its clear, engaging writing and its bold challenge to standard retributive theories of punishment. 

Adam Kolber reflects on begin named the Robert Kaufman ’57 Professor of Law in this Q&A.