Tribute To Professor Jerome A. Cohen
(1930-2025)
Founding Director of East Asian Legal Studies and formerly Jeremiah Smith Professor,
Harvard Law School. Professor of Law, Emeritus, New York University School of Law.
To the East Asian Legal Studies Community,
I write with profoundly sad news. Our dear teacher, mentor and friend Jerry Cohen passed away on Monday night September 22 at age 95. Although we spoke as recently as Sunday afternoon, and he bore his illness with characteristic courage, dignity, and grace, it still comes as a shock.
As you know, Jerry was an extraordinary figure whose impact both on the larger world and at a personal level was and remains enormous. Throughout his life, he worked assiduously both to promote understanding of East Asia and to foster human rights there (and elsewhere). Academically, he used his immense gifts to elevate the study of the law of East Asia (and especially Chinese law) in myriad ways. These included the vision to establish EALS in a manner that bridged historic differences between nations and peoples, his pioneering scholarship on everything from criminal law to international human rights to business law, and his unstinting devotion to nurturing future generations. But he was just as visionary and energized beyond academe, tirelessly undertaking human rights advocacy, and fostering broad public knowledge of East Asia, all while, for many years, being at the frontier of corporate legal practice regarding China, Vietnam and other parts of East Asia.
But Jerry was more than that to so many of us (and thousands of others). He provided a powerful example of how to live a good life. He was at once idealistic but realistic, understanding the world’s cruelties while working to address them with deftness and an appreciation for the humanity of everyone. His anecdotes were endless and his wit and sense of humor were legendary (so much so that for his 80th birthday we compiled a collection of them). And he cared so deeply for his students and so many others, taking them and their successes and hardships to heart.
I am forever grateful for the chance to have been his student and to have worked with him. Our last joint effort was a 2019 book about Taiwan and international human rights that we did with former Grand Justice Chang-fa Lo of the Republic of China (Taiwan) that received a special award from the American Society of International Law (owing, I suspect, to ASIL’s wanting to honor Jerry).
Once information becomes available about arrangements for a memorial service, we will share it. In the meantime, you may want to partake of his wonderful memoir Eastward, Westward: A Life in Law, published this year by Columbia University Press.
As we say in Judaism, may his memory be a blessing.
Thank you.
Bill
William P. Alford
Jerome A. and Joan L. Cohen Professor of East Asian Legal Studies
Director of East Asian Legal Studies
Chair of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability
September 23, 2025
