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Few Americans have done more than Jerome A. Cohen to advance the rule of law in East Asia. The founder of the study of Chinese law in the United States and a tireless advocate for human rights, Cohen has been a scholar, teacher, lawyer, and activist for more than sixty years. Moving among the United States, China, and Taiwan, he has encouraged legal reforms, promoted economic cooperation, mentored law students—including a future president of Taiwan—and brokered international crises.
In this compelling, conversational memoir, Cohen recounts a dramatic life of striving for a better world from Washington, DC, to Beijing, offering vital first-hand insights from the study and practice of Sino-American relations. In the early 1960s, when Americans were not permitted to enter China, he met with émigrés in Hong Kong and interviewed them on Chinese criminal procedure. After economic reform under Deng Xiaoping, Cohen’s knowledge of Chinese law took on a new importance as foreign companies began to pursue business opportunities. Helping China develop and reconstruct its legal system, he made an influential case for the roles of Western law and lawyers. Cohen helped break political barriers in both China and Taiwan, and he was instrumental in securing the release of political prisoners in several countries. Sharing these experiences and many others, this book tells the full story of an unparalleled career bridging East and West.
— Jonathan Landreth
Jerome A. Cohen has been the doyen of global studies of the law and politics of China and wider East Asia for more than half a century. International legal scholarship on China has been shaped by his work—not only his seminal writings but also his role as a larger-than-life figure central to transnational academic activities, legal practice, diplomacy, and civil society work engaging with China. Future generations of scholars will turn to this work to understand how China’s legal political system and international and transnational relations evolved.
— Eva Pils, author of Human Rights in China: A Social Practice in the Shadows of Authoritarianism
Cohen is a raconteur with a sharp memory for detail. This memoir provides a behind-the-scenes look at a critical moment in U.S.-China interactions as well as a frank, straightforward account of a distinguished career.
— Andrew J. Nathan, coauthor of China’s Influence and the Center-periphery Tug of War in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Indo-Pacific
[An] elegantly written memoir... worth reading not only because it unspools Cohen’s own hybrid life, but it also offers readers a personalized odyssey through the tortured history of the PRC.
— Orville Schell
Beautifully written...the tone is personal and direct... feels as if one were at the table with the author relating bit of a rich life.
— Frederic Grant Jr.
[Cohen] tells his own story in 'Eastward, Westward', and tells it with a modesty that leaves room for someone else (one day) to write the sort of congratulatory biography that Cohen so richly deserves. No American—apart, perhaps, from Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger—has had an impact on modern China as consequential...courtly and self- effacing...Cohen writes almost coyly of his multiple achievements,
— Tunku Varadarajan, American Enterprise Institute and at NYU Law School’s Classical Liberal Institute
Cohen’s memoir, elegantly told in his own voice, sparkles with intellectual humour and self-deprecating humility...an essential read not only for legal scholars but also for historians, political scientists and the general reader.
— Verna Yu, University of Oxford
Preface: Better Late Than Never?
Acknowledgments
1. Confucius Said: “Establish Yourself at Thirty”—The Decision to Study China
2. Growing Up and Getting Educated
3. Behind the Highest Bench: My Year with Chief Justice Warren
4. An Unprecedented Surprise: Another Term, This Time with Justice Frankfurter
5. Lawyering in Washington: Covington & Burling, Dean Acheson, Prosecuting Crime, Senator Fulbright
6. Berkeley Beckons: A Brave New Academic World
7. Studying China at Berkeley: Setting the Stage for a Lifelong Exploration
8. Hong Kong Bound: Interviewing Chinese Refugees
9. Transition to Harvard
10. Passionate Pursuits: A New China Policy
11. Building Harvard’s East Asian Legal Studies: Stimulating Research, Talented Students, and Timeless Ties
12. Kyoto Chronicles: A Year amid Japanese Temples and Turmoil
13. My First Trip to China: Meeting Zhou Enlai, Arguing for Jack Downey
14. Pyongyang Perspectives: Making History in North Korea
15. Saving Future President Kim Dae Jung’s Life and Other South Korean Adventures
16. Cooperating with Ted Kennedy on and in China
17. Stimulating China’s New Legal System: The Coudert Brothers Years
18. Leaving Harvard to Establish Paul Weiss Law Offices in Beijing and Hong Kong
19. Life, Law, and China Practice in the Optimistic 1980s
20. Political Justice in Taiwan: Freeing Annette Lu and Prosecuting Henry Liu’s Assassins
21. The Dark Days of 1989: China’s Tragedy and Vietnam’s Promise
22. Academic Renewal: Charting NYU’s East Asian Law Path
23. Befriending Chen Guangcheng: The Vision of China’s Blind “Barefoot Lawyer”
24. Was Helping China Build Its Post-1978 Legal System a Mistake?
25. “The Curfew Tolls the Knell of Parting Day”: “Tomorrow Will Be Even Better”?
Appendix
Index