The Joys of Being a Law School Professor

By Jerome A. Cohen

It came as a welcome surprise and honor to learn that the Association of American Law Schools Section on East Asian Law & Society has renamed their Lifetime Achievement Award as the “Jerome A. Cohen Lifetime Achievement Award". Many thanks to the work of many professors for making this happen, including Professors Margaret Woo, Mark Levin, Don Clarke, Xuan-Thao Nguyen, Mary Szto, Irene Calboli, Xiaoqian Hu, Tim Webster, and Craig Martin. The last award recipient in 2023 was Professor John Haley at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law.

On the topic of law schools, I thought I would share a very kind article here that Judge Jed Rakoff of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York wrote about his time as my law student. I not only enjoyed being his professor, but I also enjoyed later working with Judge Rakoff on a program designed to help Chinese criminal defense lawyers learn new Chinese criminal procedures patterned in some respects on U.S. law.