Jerome A. Cohen

Professor of Law Emeritus, New York University School of Law

Founder and Faculty Director Emeritus, US-Asia Law Institute of New York University School of Law

Adjunct Senior Fellow for Asia Studies, Council on Foreign Relations 

Jerome Alan Cohen was one of the leading American scholars on Chinese law and government. A pioneer in the field, Professor Cohen began studying and teaching about China’s legal system in 1960 and from 1964 to 1979 introduced the teaching of Asian law into the curriculum of Harvard Law School, where he founded and became initial director of the East Asian Legal Studies program and also served as Jeremiah Smith Professor and Associate Dean for graduate and international studies. 

He later served for several years as C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director of Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and remained there as Adjunct Senior Fellow for Asia. He retired from the partnership of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP in 2000 after over twenty years of law practice focused on China. In 2020, he retired from NYU School of Law after thirty years of teaching. In his law practice, Professor Cohen represented many companies and individuals in contract negotiations as well as in dispute resolution concerning China.

He published several books on Chinese law, including The Criminal Process in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-63 (1968), People’s China and International Law (1974, with H.D. Chiu), China Today And Her Ancient Treasures (1975, with his wife, Joan Lebold Cohen) and Challenge to China: How Taiwan Abolished its Version of Re-education Through Labor (2013, with Margaret Lewis). He also edited many books and published hundreds of scholarly articles, as well as journalistic commentary for broader audiences.

Outside academia, Professor Cohen also served in government, as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C. from 1958 to 1959 and then as a fulltime consultant to the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1959. He also testified at many congressional hearings on China.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Yale College (B.A. 1951), he spent the 1951-1952 academic year as a Fulbright Scholar in France and graduated, in 1955, from Yale Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law Journal. He was Law Secretary to Chief Justice Earl Warren of the United States Supreme Court in the 1955 Term and Law Secretary to Justice Felix Frankfurter of the Supreme Court in the 1956 Term.