G. Ben Cohen

Title: Assistant Professor of Law
Office: Room 228 C. Blake McDowell Law Building
Phone: 330-972-4281
Email: bcohen@uakron.edu
SSRN: https://ssrn.com/author=1108242
Curriculum Vitae: Download in PDF format

Biography

Ben Cohen joined the Akron Law faculty as an assistant professor of law in 2023.  Previously he was a visiting professor at the University of Missouri School of Law, and an adjunct at Tulane Law School and an instructor at the University of Iowa College of Law.  Cohen began practicing capital defense at the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center in New Orleans in 1998. He co-founded the Capital Appeals Project in 2001, where his work led to the exoneration of two condemned individuals, the reversal of six capital convictions and the setting aside of more than a dozen death sentences. He co-founded the Promise of Justice Initiative, where he was counsel on cases such as Kennedy v. Louisiana and Ramos v. Louisiana. 

In 2021, Cohen was hired as Chief of Appeals for the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office as part of a reform effort to restore confidence in the legal system.  He represented the State in serious felony cases at all stages of proceedings.  He is currently uncompensated counsel at the Department of Justice’s Office of Pardon Attorney.

Cohen has co-authored chapters in two textbooks Implicit Racial Bias Across the Law and Wrongful Convictions and the DNA Revolution and co-authored articles in journals such as Washington Law Review, Georgia Law Review, Harvard Law and Policy Review, Michigan Law Review First Impressions, Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, and Case Western Reserve Law Review.  His work has been cited in a variety of places including the Supreme Court decision Glossip v. Gross (Breyer, J., Ginsburg J., dissenting).

Cohen won awards from the Louisiana Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers for highest achievement as a capital defense lawyer (2015) and as a criminal defense lawyer (2019).  He has made multiple presentations at law schools and CLE-trainings including at Harvard Law School, Stanford Law School, Cleveland State Law School, Louisiana State University, Case Western Law School, and University of Michigan Law School. 

Cohen earned a J.D. degree cum laude from the University of Michigan and B.A. magna cum laude from Bowdoin College. During law school, Cohen created an externship to South Africa for students and clerked for then Judge Edwin Cameron at the Law Commission on HIV.