College of Law

Jacob Katz Cogan earned his JD from the Yale Law School, his MA and PhD from Princeton University, and his BA, magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania. At Yale he was an articles editor of the Yale Law Journal and an executive editor of the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities. After law school, Professor Cogan clerked for Judge Sandra Lynch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. He then held fellowships at the New York University School of Law and the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Professor Cogan has also held appointments as a visiting assistant professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School and as the assistant director of the Yale Law School’s Global Constitutionalism Project. During the spring semester of 2011, Professor Cogan taught at Vanderbilt University Law School.

Immediately prior to joining the College of Law, Professor Cogan worked as an attorney-adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State. At State, Professor Cogan counseled policymakers in the areas of law enforcement and intelligence, United Nations affairs, and international claims and investment disputes. He also served as counsel for the United States before the International Court of Justice and the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal and worked on cases at all levels of the U.S. federal courts. He is a recipient the Department’s Superior Honor Award.

Professor Cogan’s research focuses on the informal and operational dimensions of international decision processes and contemporary changes in and challenges to the character and organization of the international system. Presently, he is coediting the Oxford Handbook of International Organizations and is engaged in projects on the role of the BRICS countries in the international legal system, on the relations and connections between international organizations, and on the regulatory aspects of international law. He is also editing a book on the history of international law and coauthoring a casebook on comparative constitutional law. Professor Cogan’s publications include articles and essays in the American Journal of International Law, the European Journal of International Law, the Harvard International Law Journal, the Human Rights Quarterly, the Virginia Journal of International Law, and the Yale Journal of International Law and a coedited book in honor of Professor Michael Reisman. Professor Cogan writes the annual report on the judicial activity of the International Court of Justice for the American Journal of International Law. His article Representation and Power in International Organization: The Operational Constitution and Its Critics was awarded the 2010 Francis Deák Prize of the American Society of International Law.

Professor Cogan is an elected member of the American Law Institute. Formerly, he was co-chair of the American Society of International Law’s International Organizations Interest Group and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He edits the International Law Reporter, a widely read blog on international law scholarship. He holds both German and U.S. citizenship.