Jerome A. Cohen, a trailblazing legal scholar who illuminated China’s complex legal system for the Western world, and an unwavering advocate for human rights across Asia, passed away in Manhattan at the age of 95.
His death was confirmed by his sons Ethan and Peter.
His former student and colleague, Stephen Orlins, noted that Cohen single-handedly “created the field of the study of Chinese law in the United States,” leaving an indelible mark on academia. It’s rare to find a field so profoundly shaped by one individual from its very inception.
Initially, Cohen appeared destined for a distinguished but conventional career as a law professor. After graduating from Yale Law School, he clerked for two Supreme Court justices and took a faculty position at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught traditional legal subjects.
A photo shows Jerome A. Cohen in 2012, seated in his office at the U.S.-Asia Law Institute at New York University, an institution he founded. A colleague remarked that Mr. Cohen “created the field of the study of Chinese law in the United States.”
Credit: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
An extraordinary opportunity soon arose: to study Chinese language and law. Cohen seized it, a decision that puzzled many colleagues given China’s political turmoil and isolation from the US.
After immersing himself in the language, Mr. Cohen moved to Hong Kong in 1963. There, he meticulously interviewed mainland Chinese refugees, including former police officers, to gain authentic insights into the workings of courts and prosecutors under Mao Zedong. His groundbreaking research culminated in the 1968 publication of “The Criminal Process in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-63,” a seminal work among his numerous contributions to Chinese legal scholarship.
He later established an East Asian law program at Harvard, serving on its faculty from 1964 to 1979.
A black-and-white photo shows a much younger Mr. Cohen, with a full head of hair, sitting in an office with his hands crossed on his lap and smiling in 1975 at Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the faculty from 1964 to 1979.
Credit: Joan Lebold Cohen
Following Mao’s death and China’s gradual opening to Western investment, Cohen took another significant career turn, entering private law practice. He became a crucial advisor to foreign companies and shared his expertise in commercial law with eager Chinese officials.
In 1990, Mr. Cohen began teaching at New York University, where he hosted lawyers, judges, and human rights advocates from China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and other nations. Until his passing, he remained a vocal critic of China’s increasingly authoritarian shift under President Xi Jinping.
News of Mr. Cohen’s death prompted an outpouring of tributes from politicians, lawyers, academics, and activists across Asia. Many owed a part of their careers — and even their freedom — to his efforts. Among them was Xu Zhangrun, a Chinese law professor who faced severe consequences for criticizing Mr. Xi. Mr. Cohen had been a strong public supporter of Xu.
A photo captures Mr. Cohen and his wife, Joan Lebold Cohen, casually dressed, standing next to each other with his arm on her shoulder against a backdrop of the Great Wall and a green mountain during a family trip in 2002. She was a student of Chinese history and culture who worked as an art historian, curator, writer, and photographer.
Credit: Ethan Cohen
“His passing truly marks the end of an era,” Mr. Xu wrote in a eulogy published in the online journal China Heritage. “For Jerome Cohen, the idea of legal rights was always grounded in a respect for basic human rights.”
Jerome Alan Cohen was born on July 1, 1930, in Elizabeth, N.J., and raised in nearby Linden, the younger of two sons of Philip Cohen, a lawyer, and Beatrice (Kaufman) Cohen, a schoolteacher.
He excelled in high school and attended Yale University, where he majored in international relations before entering the law school there.
A black-and-white photo shows Jerome and Joan Lebold Cohen in Kyoto, Japan, in 1972 with their three sons, Peter, Ethan, and Seth, dressed in Japanese garb, sitting in front of a house, with the oldest son playing a flute.
Credit: Joan Lebold Cohen archive
While in college, he met Joan Lebold, and they married in 1954. She survives him, as do his three sons, Ethan, Peter, and Seth; seven grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.
In his memoir, “Eastward, Westward,” published this year, Mr. Cohen recounted the pervasive culture of antisemitism that prevented many bright Jewish law students, including himself, from securing summer internships at prestigious law firms.
Despite these barriers, he achieved remarkable success. After graduating, he and his wife moved to Washington, where he clerked for Chief Justice Earl Warren and then for Justice Felix Frankfurter. He worked for the firm Covington & Burling and as a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia before moving to Berkeley, where he began teaching criminal law in 1959.
The following year, the law school sought a candidate for a Rockefeller Foundation grant to study Chinese language and law. China was largely closed off to Americans, and little was known about its legal system. When no suitable candidate emerged, Mr. Cohen began to consider the opportunity himself.
A photo of the book cover for Mr. Cohen’s memoir, “Eastward, Westward,” published this year, features a black-and-white photo of him wearing a trench coat and sitting on a railing, with the title in white uppercase letters on two red rectangles.
Credit: Columbia University Press
Some colleagues were skeptical. In his memoir, Mr. Cohen recalled the law school’s dean at the time, William L. Prosser, cautioning him, “Don’t throw away your career on China.”
But Mr. Cohen courageously took the plunge. His wife, Joan, who already held an interest in Asian art, began to study Chinese history and culture, eventually becoming an accomplished art historian, curator, writer, and photographer.
A black-and-white photo shows Mr. Cohen with Jill Spruce of the International Commission of Jurists leaving a courthouse in Singapore in 1988, both carrying papers and looking serious after observing a proceeding involving political detainees.
Credit: Dominic Wong/Reuters
After learning Chinese, Mr. Cohen and his family moved to Hong Kong in 1963. With legal documents from China scarce, he began interviewing refugees, including former police officers, to understand the practical application of law. His pioneering study, “The Criminal Process in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-63,” published in 1968, was a seminal work, one of over a dozen books he edited, wrote, or co-wrote on Chinese law.
“He showed the great value of paying attention to what’s going on in the ground, what’s really happening down there, as opposed to just relying on written materials,” said Donald C. Clarke, an emeritus professor at George Washington University Law School.
Mr. Cohen later moved to Harvard and actively championed the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and Beijing. He harbored a strong desire to visit the Chinese mainland, making several unsuccessful attempts, including written pleas and even a proposal to acquire a panda for an American zoo.
A black-and-white photo depicts Mr. Cohen, wearing a suit and tie, with his hands behind him, standing stiffly next to Zhou Enlai, the premier of the People’s Republic of China, who is dressed casually with his left arm at his side and his right hand in front of him, in Beijing when Cohen visited China as part of a delegation of scholars in 1972.
Credit: Jerome A. Cohen archive
His opportunity finally came in 1972, when he joined a small delegation of scholars visiting Beijing and other cities. Mr. Cohen recounted struggling to engage wary residents in conversation over bowls of soy milk at a breakfast eatery. The highlight of the trip was a dinner with China’s premier, Zhou Enlai.
“I understand that you have done many books on our legal system,” Mr. Cohen recalled Mr. Zhou telling him, with a tone that “gently implied that perhaps I had made more of China’s legal system than China had.”
As Mao died and China’s leaders opened the country to foreign visitors and investment, Mr. Cohen’s expertise in Chinese law was highly sought after by international companies. He delivered lectures to Chinese officials eager to learn about drafting contracts, commercial laws, and tax regulations.
Mr. Cohen decided to leave his position at Harvard and fully commit to practicing law. In 1981, he joined the firm Paul Weiss, and actively encouraged young lawyers to specialize in China. Many recall his infectious enthusiasm, his generosity in mentoring students, and his signature bow tie.
In these years, he and his wife spent considerable time in China, where he was deeply involved in drafting contracts, advising companies, and resolving commercial disputes.
A photo of Mr. Cohen in the late 1970s shows him leaning back in a chair, looking relaxed, and gazing up at the camera while holding a newspaper with the headline “New Chinese Constitution to Be Okayed.” He retired from practicing law in 2000 but remained a professor at N.Y.U. until 2020. He also continued to visit China and occasionally took on cases.
Credit: Joan Lebold Cohen
“He had a thirst to learn,” said Yvonne Y.F. Chan, whom Mr. Cohen recruited to Paul Weiss. “We’d be in these grueling negotiations and he’d ask these questions that might even go off on a tangent, because he was so curious to understand where the other side was coming from.”
Mr. Cohen retired from Paul Weiss in 2000, but continued as a professor at N.Y.U. until 2020, where he founded the U.S.-Asia Law Institute. He maintained his visits to China and occasionally took on cases, including that of Zhao Yan, a researcher for The New York Times who was imprisoned on fraud charges in 2006 after earlier accusations of stealing state secrets were dropped.
Mr. Cohen also showed profound interest in the plight of Chinese legal and human rights activists, Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi, who received lengthy prison terms in 2023 for subversion of state power. He also supported Chen Guangcheng, a blind legal activist who fled his home village, sought refuge in the American Embassy in Beijing, and later came to the United States in 2012.
“He organized a seminar to make sure that people paid attention to the case,” Mr. Ding’s wife, Sophie Luo, said in an interview. “He put me in touch with people and organized resources. He didn’t want them to be forgotten.”
Mr. Cohen frequently lamented China’s increasingly repressive policies under Mr. Xi, yet he always rejected despair.
“I’m not totally pessimistic, as some people are,” he said in an interview published last year in the digital newsmagazine The Wire China. “China’s development has been pendulum-like. At the moment, we’re in a repressive period. That won’t last. It can’t last.”
An audio narration of this article is available, lasting approximately 8 minutes and 41 seconds.