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 Columbia Law School (Columbia Law or CLS) is the law school of Columbia University, a private Ivy League university in New York City. Columbia Law is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious law schools in the world and has always ranked i ...

Education

Coffee grew up in

Manhasset Manhasset is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) in Nassau County, on the North Shore of Long Island, in New York. It is considered the anchor community of the Greater Manhasset area. The population was 8,176 at the 2020 United States ce ...

, 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 Kenneth Joseph Howard Jr. (March 28, 1944 – March 23, 2016) was an American actor. He was known for his roles as Thomas Jefferson in '' 1776'' and as basketball coach and former Chicago Bulls player Ken Reeves in the television show '' The Wh ...

. He received his

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

from Amherst College in 1966, his

LL.B. Bachelor of Laws ( la, Legum Baccalaureus; LL.B.) is an undergraduate law degree in the United Kingdom and most common law jurisdictions. Bachelor of Laws is also the name of the law degree awarded by universities in the People's Republic of Chi ...

from

Yale Law School Yale Law School (Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824 and has been ranked as the best law school in the United States by '' U.S. News & Worl ...

in 1969 and later an LL.M. (in taxation) from

New York University School of Law New York University School of Law (NYU Law) is the law school of New York University, a private research university in New York City. Established in 1835, it is the oldest law school in New York City and the oldest surviving law school in N ...

Career

Following graduation from law school, Coffee was a Reginald Heber Smith fellow for one year, doing poverty law litigation in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. He entered private practice as an attorney at

Cravath, Swaine & Moore Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP (known as Cravath) is an American white-shoe law firm with its headquarters in New York City, and an additional office in London. The firm is known for its complex and high profile litigation and mergers & acquisiti ...

from 1970-76. He has also served as Reporter for the

American Bar Association The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students, which is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. Founded in 1878, the ABA's most important stated activities are the setting of aca ...

for its Model Standards on Sentencing Alternatives and Procedures and for the American Law Institute's Principles of Corporate Governance. From 1976-1980, he was a professor at

Georgetown University Law Center The Georgetown University Law Center (Georgetown Law) is the law school of Georgetown University, a private research university in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1870 and is the largest law school in the United States by enrollment and ...

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 The University of Virginia School of Law (Virginia Law or UVA Law) is the law school of the University of Virginia, a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson as part of his "academical v ...

(1978), and the

University of Michigan Law School The University of Michigan Law School (Michigan Law) is the law school of the University of Michigan, a public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Founded in 1859, the school offers Master of Laws (LLM), Master of Comparative Law (MCL ...

(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 ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'' and other major media outlets, such as

Fox News The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owne ...

and

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...

, in their corporate and securities reporting. He has also written one of the best known

casebook A casebook is a type of textbook used primarily by students in law schools.Wayne L. Anderson and Marilyn J. Headrick, The Legal Profession: Is it for you?' (Cincinnati: Thomson Executive Press, 1996), 83. Rather than simply laying out the legal do ...

s on U.S. securities regulation, as well as another on corporations. He is considered one of the foremost

legal scholar Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...

s in that area of

securities law Securities regulation in the United States is the field of U.S. law that covers transactions and other dealings with securities. The term is usually understood to include both federal and state-level regulation by governmental regulatory agencies ...

. Professor Coffee is the most cited law professor in law reviews in the combined corporate, commercial, and business law field.

Personal

Coffee lives in

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

. His wife, Jane, who was a professor of Mathematics at the

College of Staten Island The College of Staten Island (CSI) is a public university in Staten Island, New York. It is one of the 11 four-year senior colleges within the City University of New York system. Programs in the liberal arts and sciences and professional studie ...

, died in 2022. They have one daughter, who is a physician. On August 10, 2011, Coffee was a guest on

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...

.List of Daily Show guests
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Publications

;Books *1988 (with Lowenstein and Rose-Ackerman). ''Knights, Raiders and Targets: The Impact of the Hostile Takeover''. *2004 (with Klein). ''Business Organization and Finance: Legal and Economic Principles'', 9th ed. *2008 (with Choper and Gilson). ''Cases and Materials on Corporations'', 7th ed. *2012 (with Hillary A. Sale). ''Securities Regulation: Cases and Materials'', 12th ed. *2020. ''Corporate Crime and Punishment: The Crisis of Underenforcement'', Berrett-Koehler Publishers, . ;Articles *'Rescuing the Private Attorney General: Why the Model of the Lawyer as Bounty Hunter is Not Working' (1983) vol. 42 Issue 2 Michigan Law Review 21
Maryland Law Review
*'Shareholders Versus Managers: The Strain in the Corporate Web' (1986) 85 Michigan Law Review 1 . . *'Hail Britannia?: Institutional Investor Behavior Under Limited Regulation' (1994) 92(7) ''Michigan Law Review'' 1997-2087 (with Bernard S. Black) . . . *'The Future as History: The Prospects for Global Convergence in Corporate Governance and its Implications', (1999) 93

Northwestern University Law Review The ''Northwestern University Law Review'' is a law review and student organization at Northwestern University School of Law. The ''Law Review''s primary purpose is to publish a journal of broad legal scholarship. The ''Law Review'' publishes s ...

643. . *2000 'The Rise of Dispersed Ownership: The Role of Law in the Separation of Ownership and Control' Columbia Law and Economics Working Paper No. 182. . . *2001 'Do Norms Matter?: A Cross-Country Examination of the Private Benefits of Control' Columbia Law and Economics Working Paper No. 183. . . . *2002 'Understanding Enron: It's About the Gatekeepers, Stupid' ''Columbia Law & Economics'' 56(4) Working Paper No. 207. . . *2006 'Reforming the Securities Class Action: An Essay on Deterrence and its Implementation' Columbia Law and Economics Working Paper No. 293. 106(7). . . . *2008 'Redesigning the SEC: Does the Treasury Have a Better Idea?' Columbia Law and Economics Working Paper No. 342. (with Hillary A. Sale). . *2010 'Dispersed Ownership: The Theories, the Evidence, and the Enduring Tension Between 'Lumpers' and 'Splitters'' Columbia Law and Economics Working Paper No. 363. . .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Coffee, John C. 1944 births Living people People from Manhasset, New York New York (state) lawyers Manhasset High School alumni New York University School of Law alumni Amherst College alumni Yale Law School alumni Harvard Law School faculty University of Virginia School of Law faculty Columbia Law School faculty Scholars of securities law Cravath, Swaine & Moore people