The American Foreign Law Association (AFLA) gave its 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award in International Law to Jerome A. Cohen, founding director emeritus of the U.S.-Asia Law Institute.

The association presented the award on June 16 at its annual meeting. Its announcement said the honor recognized Professor Cohen’s “decades of major contributions to a better understanding of Trans-Pacific, international, and human rights law.”

Professor Cohen pioneered research and teaching about China’s contemporary legal system in American law schools in the 1960s. He taught at Harvard Law School from 1964 to 1979 and at New York University Law School beginning in 1990. He also is Of Counsel at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, where he long represented foreign companies in contract negotiations and dispute resolution in China, Vietnam, and other countries in East Asia. Professor Cohen served for several years as C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and director of Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he currently is an adjunct senior fellow.