John C. Coffee

Last updated
John C. Coffee
Born (1944-11-15) November 15, 1944 (age 79)
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater N.Y.U. School of Law
Yale Law School
Amherst College
Scientific career
Fields Business law, Tax law
Institutions Columbia Law School

John C. Coffee Jr. (born November 15, 1944) is the Adolf A. Berle Professor of Law and director of the Center on Corporate Governance at Columbia Law School.

Contents

Education

Coffee grew up in Manhasset, New York. He is of Irish descent. He attended Manhasset High School where he was in the National Honor Society . After graduation, he attended Amherst College with his high school friend and classmate, actor Ken Howard. He received his B.A. from Amherst College in 1966, his LL.B. from Yale Law School in 1969 and later an LL.M. (in taxation) from New York University School of Law. [1]

Career

Following graduation from law school, Coffee was a Reginald Heber Smith fellow for one year, doing poverty law litigation in New York City. He entered private practice as an attorney at Cravath, Swaine & Moore from 1970 to 1976. He has also served as Reporter for the American Bar Association for its Model Standards on Sentencing Alternatives and Procedures and for the American Law Institute's Principles of Corporate Governance. From 1976 to 1980, he was a professor at Georgetown University Law Center before coming to Columbia. He was also a visiting professor at Harvard Law School (2001), Stanford University Law School (1988), the University of Virginia Law School (1978), and the University of Michigan Law School (1979).

Coffee has been listed by the National Law Journal as one of the "100 Most Influential Lawyers in the United States." He is often quoted by The New York Times , [2] The Wall Street Journal [3] and other major media outlets, such as Fox News and CNN, in their corporate and securities reporting. He has also written one of the best known casebooks on U.S. securities regulation, as well as another on corporations. He is considered one of the foremost legal scholars in that area of securities law. Coffee is the most cited law professor in law reviews in the combined corporate, commercial, and business law field. [4]

Personal life

Coffee lives in New Jersey. His wife, Jane, who was a professor of Mathematics at the College of Staten Island, died in 2022. [5] [6] They have one daughter, who is a physician.

On August 10, 2011, Coffee was a guest on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. [7]

Publications

Books
Articles

Related Research Articles

Regulation is the management of complex systems according to a set of rules and trends. In systems theory, these types of rules exist in various fields of biology and society, but the term has slightly different meanings according to context. For example:

Corporate governance are mechanisms, processes and relations by which corporations are controlled and operated ("governed").

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Law and economics</span> Application of economic theory to analysis of legal systems

Law and economics, or economic analysis of law, is the application of microeconomic theory to the analysis of law. The field emerged in the United States during the early 1960s, primarily from the work of scholars from the Chicago school of economics such as Aaron Director, George Stigler, and Ronald Coase. The field uses economics concepts to explain the effects of laws, assess which legal rules are economically efficient, and predict which legal rules will be promulgated. There are two major branches of law and economics; one based on the application of the methods and theories of neoclassical economics to the positive and normative analysis of the law, and a second branch which focuses on an institutional analysis of law and legal institutions, with a broader focus on economic, political, and social outcomes, and overlapping with analyses of the institutions of politics and governance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrei Shleifer</span> American economist

Andrei Shleifer is a Russian-American economist and Professor of Economics at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1991. Shleifer was awarded the biennial John Bates Clark Medal in 1999 for his seminal works in three fields: corporate finance, the economics of financial markets, and the economics of transition.

An agency cost is an economic concept that refers to the costs associated with the relationship between a "principal", and an "agent". The agent is given powers to make decisions on behalf of the principal. However, the two parties may have different incentives and the agent generally has more information. The principal cannot directly ensure that its agent is always acting in its best interests. This potential divergence in interests is what gives rise to agency costs.

Michael Cole Jensen was an American economist who worked in the field of financial economics. From 1967-1988, he was on the University of Rochester's faculty. Between 2000 and 2009 he worked for the Monitor Company Group, a strategy-consulting firm which became "Monitor Deloitte" in 2013. Until 2000, he held the position of Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration at Harvard University.

Richard Delgado is an American legal scholar considered to be one the founders of critical race theory, along with Derrick Bell. Delgado is currently a Distinguished Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law. Previously, he was the John J. Sparkman Chair of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law. He has written and co-authored numerous articles and books, many with his wife, Jean Stefancic. He is also notable for his scholarship on hate speech and for introducing storytelling into legal scholarship.

Christine M. Jolls is the Gordon Bradford Tweedy Professor of Law and Organization at Yale Law School, where she has been since 2006. She is known for her work in the emerging theory of behavioral economics and law. Her areas of research include employment law and contracts.

Marvin A. Chirelstein was a Professor Emeritus of Law at Columbia Law School, where he taught for nearly 30 years. He taught a contracts course to first year law students as well as tax and corporate finance courses. Prior to teaching at Columbia, Professor Chirelstein taught for over 15 years at Yale Law School. He authored several course books on law.

Paul Lyndon Davies KC (Hon), FBA is Allen & Overy Professor of Corporate Law Emeritus at the University of Oxford, Emeritus Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, and Emeritus Professor of Law at the London School of Economics, where he was the Cassel Professor of Commercial Law from 1998 to 2009. He is an honorary Bencher of Gray’s Inn.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John F. Manning</span> American legal academic (born 1961)

John Francis Manning is an American legal scholar who serves as the provost of Harvard University. He is the Dane Professor of Law at Harvard Law School (HLS), where he is a scholar of administrative and constitutional law. From 2017 to 2024, he was the 13th Dean of Harvard Law School.

D. Gordon Smith was the dean of the J. Reuben Clark Law School of Brigham Young University (BYU) from 2016 to 2023. Smith has taught classes in business associations, contracts, corporate finance, law & entrepreneurship, and securities regulation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kent Greenfield (law professor)</span> American lawyer

Kent Greenfield is an American lawyer, Professor of Law and Law Fund Research Scholar at Boston College, and frequent commentator to The Huffington Post. He is the author of The Myth of Choice: Personal Responsibility in a World of Limits and The Failure of Corporate Law: Fundamental Flaws and Progressive Possibilities, published by University of Chicago Press in 2006, and scholarly articles. He is best known for his "stakeholder" critique of the conventional legal doctrine and theory of corporate law, and for his leadership in a legal battle between law schools and the Pentagon over free speech and gay rights.

Gillian Kereldena Hadfield is a professor of law and of strategic management who is the inaugural Schwartz Reisman Chair in Technology and Society at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. She is also director of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. Previously, she was the Richard L. and Antoinette Schamoi Kirtland Professor of Law and Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California. At USC, Hadfield directed the Southern California Innovation Project and the USC Center in Law, Economics, and Organization. She is a former member of the board of directors for the American Law and Economics Association and the International Society for New Institutional Economics. From 2018 to 2023, Hadfield served as Senior Policy Adviser to the artificial intelligence company OpenAI.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert J. Jackson Jr.</span> American lawyer and academic

Robert J. Jackson Jr. is an American lawyer and academic. He currently serves as a professor of law at New York University School of Law, where he is on public service leave. Jackson's research emphasizes the empirical study of executive compensation and corporate governance matters. On September 1, 2017, the White House announced that President Donald Trump had nominated Jackson to fill the open Democratic seat on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Jackson was unanimously approved by the Senate Banking Committee for the seat, and thereafter unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate on December 21, 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chen Long (finance)</span>

Chen Long currently serves as the director of Luohan Academy, the think tank of Alibaba. Before this, he was the chief strategy officer of Ant Financial Group since 2014. Chen received his Ph.D. in Finance from University of Toronto, and was a tenured professor at Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis. After returning to China in 2010, Chen took the position of the Associate Dean of Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB), Professor of Finance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rüdiger Fahlenbrach</span> German economist

Rüdiger Fahlenbrach is a German economist specialised in finance. He is a professor of finance at EPFL and holds the Swiss Finance Institute Senior Research Chair.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert Alschuler</span> American legal scholar

Albert W. Alschuler is an American legal scholar best known for his work in criminal procedure and criminal law. He is the Julius Kreeger Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago Law School. He previously taught at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Colorado, and the University of Pennsylvania, and is known particularly for a study of plea bargaining.

Martin Schmalz is a German financial economist. He is the Head of the Finance, Accounting, Management, and Economics Area and Professor of Finance and Economics at the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School. He is also the Chief Economist and Director of the Office of Economic and Risk Analysis of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John D. Morley</span> American legal scholar

John Dirk Morley is an American legal scholar. He is the Augustus E. Lines Professor of Testamentary Law at Yale Law School, where he also serves as Faculty Director of the Chae Initiative in Private Sector Leadership.

References