Paul C. Kapfer

Adjunct Professor

Paul Kapfer teaches the Humanitarian Law & Conflict – Humanitarian Law in Practice course sequence and coaches law student teams in the Clara Barton International Humanitarian Law Competition. Paul served on active duty in the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps for 20 years, practicing in this area with the intelligence community after 9-11, on deployment in Iraq; and as a State Department-sponsored instructor in India and West Africa. At the Army’s Center for Law and Military Operations in Charlottesville, VA, he published lessons-learned from attorneys stationed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and aboard Navy ships, and wrote counter-piracy investigation procedures and an article summarizing them for the U.S. Coast Guard’s Proceedings magazine. In Great Lakes, Illinois, he served as executive officer (managing partner) of an office with 10 attorneys and 20 paralegals in prosecution and government advice roles, and as counsel for the Navy’s boot camp.

Paul’s undergraduate degree (Valparaiso) is in international economics and French. He was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. His JD is from the University of Iowa, where he was an editor of the Journal of Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems.

Paul has a master’s degree in real estate development from the University of Maryland and is general counsel for the Renaissance Companies, an affordable housing developer based in Chicago. He has worked with city and state government to preserve 550 affordable units developed under Title 42, U.S. Code; overseen an assisted living facility; sold out a single-family subdivision in Oregon; litigated construction defects in Cook County circuit court; and preserved western water rights on an industrial parcel. Paul sits on the board of Greenbelt Homes, Inc., a 1,600-unit ($14 MM budget) housing cooperative and forest preserve designed and built in the 1930s by a New Deal agency outside Washington, DC.

Education

BA, Valparaiso University
JD, University of Iowa School of Law
MA, University of Maryland

Professional Employment

The Renaissance Companies

Courses Taught

Humanitarian Law and Conflict (LAW 445)
Humanitarian Law in Practice (LAW 460)

Publications/Research Listings

Paul Kapfer & Marianne Ryan, The Quandary of Factual Ambiguity, portal: Libraries and the Academy, Vol. 21, No. 1, p. 1 Editorial (2021).

"The Terraces: 15% Affordable, Mixed-Use Proposal for 812 Silver Spring Avenue," report and presentation to Capstone jury, University of Maryland School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation 2017.

Editor, Legal Lessons Learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, Vol. III (Jul 2004-Dec 2010). Center for Law and Military Operations, The Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School (TJAGLCS), Charlottesville, Virginia 2013.

Self-Directed Training on the Law of the Sea. TJAGLCS (Center for Law and Military Operations)/U.S. Navy Office of the Judge Advocate General (Code 10) 2013.

"An Evolving Target: The Challenge of Fighting Piracy at Sea." Proceedings of the Marine Safety and Security Council, U.S. Coast Guard, Spring 2012, 58-59.

Symposium Editor, Journal of Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems, University of Iowa College of Law: World Security and Weapons Proliferation (1992); Self-Determination and Indigenous Peoples' Rights (1993).