Marjorie Cohn
Professor of Law
J.D., Santa Clara University School of Law;
B.A., Stanford University, with departmental honors in Social Thought and Institutions
Telephone: 619.374.6923
Email: marjorie@tjsl.edu
Professor Cohn is immediate past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She lectures throughout the world on international human rights and U.S. foreign policy. A news consultant for CBS News, and a legal analyst for Court TV, she also provides legal and political commentary on BBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, Air America and Pacifica Radio. Professor Cohn is the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law and co-author of Cameras in the Courtroom: Television and the Pursuit of Justice. Her new book, Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent, will be published in winter 2009. Her articles have appeared in numerous journals such as Fordham Law Review, Hastings Law Journal and Virginia Journal of International Law, as well as The National Law Journal, Christian Science Monitor and Chicago Tribune. Professor Cohn is a contributing editor to Jurist, MWC News and Guild Practitioner and her weekly columns appear on AlterNet, Counterpunch, CommonDreams, HuffingtonPost, OpedNews, AtlanticFreePress, AfterDowningStreet, ZNet, and GlobalResearch, and are archived at http://www.marjoriecohn.com/. She has been a criminal defense attorney at the trial and appellate levels for many years, and was staff counsel to the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board. Professor Cohn is the U.S. representative to the executive committee of the Association of American Jurists and is a member of the Bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. The recipient of the San Diego County Bar Association's 2005 Service to Legal Education Award, Professor Cohn was recognized as one of San Diego's Top Attorneys in Academics for 2006, 2008 and 2009, was given the 2007 Bernard E. Witkin, Esq. Award for Excellence in the Teaching of the Law by the San Diego Law Library Justice Foundation, and received the 2008 Peace Scholar of the Year Award from the Peace and Justice Studies Association. She sits on the Advisory Committee of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego, the Advisory Board of the U.S. Human Rights Network, the Board of Directors of Lawyers Rights Watch Canada, the Human Rights Committee of the Society of American Law Teachers, and the Board of Directors of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign. She also serves on the Roster of Experts at the Institute for Public Accuracy. Professor Cohn testified in 2008 about government torture policy before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. She was a legal observer in Iran on behalf of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers in 1978 and she has participated in delegations to Cuba, China and Yugoslavia. She lived in Mexico and is fluent in Spanish. Professor Cohn has taught at Thomas Jefferson since 1991.
Visit Professor Cohn's website.
Scholarship
Books
The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration and Abuse (Ed., NYU Press, forthcoming 2010)
Rules Of Disengagement: The Politics And Honor Of Military Dissent (PoliPointPress 2009, co-authored with Kathleen Gilberd)
Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law (PoliPointPress, 2007)
Cameras in The Courtroom: Television and the Pursuit of Justice (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1998) (co-authored with David Dow), reprinted (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield 2002) and in Chinese translation by Cite (2002)
Editorial
Contributing Editor (2005-present), MWC News Magazine, published online
Contributing Editor (2000-present), Jurist: Legal Intelligence for an Educated Democracy (published online, http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forum)
Contributing Editor (2004-2005), Truthout (published online, http://www.truthout.org)
Editor (1994-2004), Guild Practitioner (National Lawyers Guild)
Editorial Board (1991-present), Guild Practitioner (National Lawyers Guild)
Articles, Book Chapters and Other Article-Length Works
Colorblind Injustice: Roberts Court Violates Affirmative Action Mandates in Race Convention, 65 Guild Practitioner 68 (2009)
Trading Civil Liberties for Apparent Security is a Bad Deal, 12 Chapman L. Rev.615 (2009)
Peace Profile: Victor Rabinowitz, 20 Peace Rev. 398 (2008)
Let the Sun Shine on the Supreme Court, 35 Hastings Const. L.Q. 161 (2008)
Police Interrogation, How the Court Refused to Find That Torture Violates Due Process, in We Dissent: Talking Back to the Rehnquist Court. Eight Cases that Subverted Civil Liberties and Civil Rights, (Michael Avery, ed., NYU Press, 2008)
Speech Upon Assuming the Presidency of the National Lawyers Guild, 63 Guild Practitioner 129 (2006)
The Gonzales Indictment, in In the Name of Democracy: American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond (Jeremy Brecher, Jill Cutler, and Brendan Smith, eds., Metropolitan/Holt 2005)
Book Review: Michael Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes Against Humanity (Pluto, 2004), 19 Internat. J. Semiotics L. 457 (2006)
Book Review: Michael Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes Against Humanity (Pluto, 2004), 62 Guild Practitioner 162 (2005)
U.S. Coup D’Etat in Haiti, 61 Guild Practitioner 129 (2004)
United States Violation of International Law in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, in Challenges of Multi-Level Constitutionalism 233 (Joakim Nergelius, Pasquale Policastro & Kenji Urata, eds., Polpress, 2004)
Resisting Equality: Why the United States Refuses to Ratify the Women's Convention, 26 T. Jefferson L. Rev. 15 (2004)
Close the Concentration Camp at Guantanamo, 76 Covert Action Quarterly (2004)
Oil: Weapon of Mass Destruction, 11 Bridges: An Interdisciplinary J Theology, Phil., Hist. & Science 1 (2004)
Human Rights: Casualty of the War on Terror, 25 T. Jefferson L. Rev. 317 (2004)
On Terrorism and National Liberation Struggles, 11 Intl'l Islamic Univ. Malaysia L.J. 297 (2004)
Saving the World From the Scourge of Unilateralism, 60 Guild Practitioner 194 (2003)
The Legal Profession: Looking Backward: The Evisceration of the Attorney-Client Privilege in the Wake of September 11, 2001, 71 Fordham L. Rev. 1233 (2003)
The Myth of Humanitarian Intervention in Kosovo, in Lessons of Kosovo: The Dangers of Humanitarian Intervention 121 (Aleksandar Jokic, ed., Broadview, 2003)
Affirmative Action and the Equality Principle in Human Rights Treaties: United States’ Violation of Its International Obligations, 43 Va. J. Int'l. L. 249 (2002)
Understanding, Responding to, and Preventing Terrorism, 24 Arab Studies Q. 25 (2002) f
NATO Bombing of Kosovo: Humanitarian Intervention or Crime Against Humanity?, 15 Int'l. J. for Semiotics of L. 79 (2002)
Bombing of Afghanistan Is Illegal and Must Be Stopped, Int'l Rev. Contemporary L. 51 (special ed. 2002, Military Intervention in Afghanistan, The War on Terrorism: Violations of International Law)
Affirmative Action Mandates in U.S. International Legal Obligations, in Using the Law to Achieve Equality: A Report from the National Lawyers Guild-National Union of Cuban Jurists Seminar in Havana, Cuba 9 (Nat’l Lawyers Guild, 2002)
Criminal Law: Substantive Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure, in Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems, Social Sciences and Humanities: Law, § 6.31.2.4 (UNESCO-Eolss, 2002) (published online at http://www.eolss.net) (co-authored with Steven Semeraro & Ruth B. Philips)
The World Trade Organization: Elevating Property Interests Above Human Rights, 29 Ga. J. Int'l & Comp. L. 427 (2001)
Open-And-Shut: Senate Impeachment Deliberations Must Be Public, 51 Hastings L.J. 365 (2000)
The WTO: A New World Government Dedicated to the Principle That Property Interests Are More Sacred Than Human Rights, 57 Guild Practitioner 134 (2000)
The Politics of the Clinton Impeachment and the Death of the Independent Counsel Statute: Toward Depoliticization, 102 W. Va. L. Rev. 59 (1999)
Featured Broadcasts
Professor's congressional testimony:
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=205193-1
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4861924155064592552
Professor Cohn's appearances on C-SPAN Book TV http://www.booktv.org/program.aspx?ProgramId=8844&SectionName=&PlayMedia=No
Democracy Now! http://www.p3books.com/audio/07.8.8marjoriecohndemocracynow.mp3
Noteworthy
Quoted in Scott Marshall, Victim advocates say work is not done. Some call for more protection; law professor says past measure have hurt defendant rights, North County Times, San Diego, Apr. 30, 2007, B1
Feature: A Political Lawyer: Marjorie Cohn '75 Heads the National Lawyers Guild, Santa Clara Law, Spring 2007
http://cms.scu.edu/etal/spring2007/cohn.cfm
Other Scholarship
Download a list of Professor Cohn’s online publications.
Download a list of Professor Cohn’s shorter works (updated 6-22-09).
Subjects Include: Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Evidence, International Human Rights Law.
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