Professor Amy Cohen

Professor Amy Cohen

Honorary Professor

BA (summa cum laude), Rutgers University

JD (magna cum laude), Harvard Law School

Law & Justice
School of Law, Society & Criminology

A creative and cross-disciplinary scholar, Amy J. Cohen brings a range of qualitative and historical research methods to bear on two areas of legal scholarship—mediation and conflict resolution, including among organizers building alternatives to the criminal legal system, and law and economic development, including the law and political economy of agriculture and food. She joins UNSW from the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law where she is the John. C. Elam/Vorys Sater Professor of Law.

Amy has held visiting professorships at Harvard Law School, Osgoode Hall Law School, the University of Turin, Faculty of Law, and the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, and she has held fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the American Institute of Indian Studies at the University of Chicago, the Fulbright Program, and the Collegio Carlo Alberto.

Her articles have appeared in interdisciplinary publications, such as Law and Social Inquiry, Law, Culture, and the HumanitiesNOMOS, and Political and Legal Anthropology Review, as well as in a number of US-based law reviews, such as Texas Law ReviewLaw and Contemporary Problems, and Minnesota Law Review.  

After law school, she taught at the Kathmandu School of Law in Nepal as a Fulbright scholar, clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver, Colorado, and worked on community development initiatives in Ghana, Nepal, and Thailand..

  • Books | 2021
    O'CONNELL ME; Bradley AS; Cohen AJ, 2021, International Dispute Resolution Cases and Materials
  • Book Chapters | 2019
    Cohen A; Gruber A, 2019, 'Governance Feminism in New York’s Human Trafficking Intervention Courts', in Governance Feminism Notes from the Field, U of Minnesota Press, pp. 83 - 112, http://dx.doi.org/10.5749/j.ctvdjrpfs
    Book Chapters | 2019
    Cohen A; Jackson J, 2019, 'Rights as Logistics: Notes on the Right to Food and and Food Retail Liberalization in India', in Young KG; College B (ed.), The Future of Economic and Social Rights, Cambridge University Press, pp. 407 - 433, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/9781108284653.016
    Book Chapters | 2019
    Cohen A, 2019, 'An Accidental Governance Feminist: An Interview with Kate Mogulescu', in Halley J; Kotiswaran P (ed.), Governance Feminism Notes from the Field, U of Minnesota Press, pp. 113 - 123, http://dx.doi.org/10.5749/j.ctvdjrpfs.8
    Book Chapters | 2018
    Cohen A, 2018, 'On Compromise, Negotiation, and Loss', in Compromise NOMOS LIX, NYU Press
    Book Chapters | 2017
    Cohen A, 2017, 'ADR and Some Thoughts on the Social', in Searching for Contemporary Legal Thought, Cambridge University Press
    Book Chapters | 2017
    Cohen A, 2017, 'Law in the Shadow of Negotiation: On the Jurisprudence of Roger Fishe', in The Negotiator's Desk Reference, Dri Press
  • Journal articles | 2022
    Cohen A, 2022, 'The Rise and Fall of Informal Justice and the Death of ADR', Connecticut law review
    Journal articles | 2022
    Cohen AJ; Jackson J, 2022, 'Governing through markets: Multinational firms in the bazaar economy', Regulation and Governance, 16, pp. 409 - 426, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/rego.12372
    Journal articles | 2022
    Cohen AJ; Vicol M; Pol G, 2022, 'Living under value chains: The new distributive contract and arguments about unequal bargaining power', Journal of Agrarian Change, 22, pp. 179 - 196, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/joac.12466
    Journal articles | 2020
    Cohen A, 2020, 'A Labor Theory of Negotiation: From Integration to Value Creation', Journal of Law and Political Economy, 1
    Journal articles | 2020
    Cohen AJ, 2020, 'Negotiating the Value Chain: A Study of Surplus and Distribution in Indian Markets for Food', Law & Social Inquiry, 45, pp. 460 - 492, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/lsi.2019.49
    Journal articles | 2019
    Cohen A, 2019, 'Moral Restorative Justice: A Political Genealogy of Activism and Neoliberalism in the United States', Minnesota Law Review, pp. 889 - 953, https://minnesotalawreview.org/article/moral-restorative-justice-a-political-genealogy-of-activism-and-neoliberalism-in-the-united-states/
    Journal articles | 2018
    Cohen AJ, 2018, 'Transnational legal methodology and domestic markets for food', Transnational Legal Theory, 9, pp. 361 - 370, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20414005.2018.1578556
    Journal articles | 2017
    Cohen A, 2017, 'Trauma and the Welfare State: A Genealogy of Prostitution Courts in New York City', Texas law review
    Journal articles | 2017
    Cohen A, 2017, '“Everything is Not About Convenience”: Family, State, Supermarket in Middle-Class West Bengal', UC Irvine Law Review
    Journal articles | 2016
    Gruber A; Cohen A; Kate M, 2016, 'Penal Welfare and The New Human Trafficking Intervention Courts', Florida law review
    Journal articles | 2015
    Cohen A, 2015, 'Law and Society Scholarship after the Turn to Culture and Away from the State', Anthropology of this Century
    Journal articles | 2015
    Cohen A, 2015, 'The Law and Political Economy of Contemporary Food: Some Reflections on the Local and the Small', Law and Contemporary Problems
    Journal articles | 2015
    Cohen AJ; Gershon I, 2015, 'When the State Tries to See Like a Family: Cultural Pluralism and the Family Group Conference in New Zealand', PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 38, pp. 9 - 29, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/plar.12084
    Journal articles | 2014
    Cohen A, 2014, 'Review of CHAIA HELLER, FOOD, FARMS, & SOLIDARITY', PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review
    Journal articles | 2013
    Cohen A, 2013, 'Supermarkets in India: Struggles over the Organization of Agricultural Markets and Food Supply Chains', University of Miami law review
    Journal articles | 2013
    Cohen AJ, 2013, 'On Being Anti-Imperial: Consensus Building, Anarchism, and ADR', Law, Culture and the Humanities, 9, pp. 243 - 260, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1743872111417965
    Journal articles | 2012
    Cohen AJ, 2012, 'Producing Publics: Dewey, Democratic Experimentalism, and the Idea of Communication', Contemporary Pragmatism, 9, pp. 143 - 157, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18758185-90000234
    Journal articles | 2011
    Cohen A; Michal A, 2011, 'Progressive Constitutionalism and Alternative Movements in Law', Ohio State law journal
    Journal articles | 2011
    Cohen A, 2011, 'Commentary on Ilana Gershon, Neoliberal Agency', Current Anthropology
    Journal articles | 2011
    Cohen A, 2011, 'The Family, the Market, and ADR', Journal on Dispute Resolution
    Journal articles | 2010
    Cohen A, 2010, 'Governance Legalism: Hayek and Sabel on Reason and Rules, Organization and Law', Wisconsin law review
    Journal articles | 2009
    Cohen A, 2009, 'Dispute Systems Design, Neoliberalism, and the Problem of Scale', Harvard Negotiation Law Review
    Journal articles | 2009
    Cohen A, 2009, 'Revisiting Against Settlement: Some Reflections on Dispute Resolution and Public Values', Fordham Law Review
    Journal articles | 2009
    Cohen A, 2009, 'Thinking with Culture in Law and Development', Buffalo Law Review
    Journal articles | 2008
    Cohen AJ, 2008, 'Negotiation, Meet New Governance: Interests, Skills, and Selves', Law & Social Inquiry, 33, pp. 501 - 562, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-4469.2008.00111.x
    Journal articles | 2006
    Cohen A, 2006, 'Comparative Considerations: Towards the Global Transfer of Ideas on Dispute System Design', Dispute Resolution Magazine
    Journal articles | 2006
    Cohen A, 2006, 'Debating the Globalization of U.S. Mediation: Politics, Power, and Practice in Nepal', Harvard Negotiation Law Review
    Journal articles | 2004
    Cohen A, 2004, 'Must we Ask?: Revisiting the Role of Gender in Negotiation', Dispute Resolution Magazine
    Journal articles | 2003
    Cohen A, 2003, 'Gender: An (Un)Useful Category of Prescriptive Negotiation Analysis?', Texas journal of women and the law

My Teaching

Legal experimentalism; Food Law; ADR; Mediation