Contact: Jeanine Plant-Chirlin, jeanine.plant-chirlin@nyu.edu, 646-292-8322
New York, NY – The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law is pleased to welcome as a new Fellow Andrew Cohen, a Murrow Award-winning journalist and one of the nation’s leading legal analysts.
Today, Cohen wrote a column for the Center’s website on this week’s Voting Rights Act case, Shelby County v. Holder, arguing Section 5 is still needed to combat racial discrimination in voting.
Cohen, the first-ever legal analyst for 60 Minutes, currently serves as chief network legal analyst for CBS Radio News. He also is a national correspondent and contributing editor for legal affairs for The Atlantic, where he writes online about the intersection of law and politics.
“Andrew Cohen is one of the nation’s top legal journalists, and we are thrilled to bring him on board,” said John Kowal, the Center’s Vice President for Programs. “Andrew brings deep experience in reporting on the Supreme Court, the lower federal courts, the Justice Department, voting, and criminal justice issues. He will enhance the public’s understanding of the democracy and justice issues we care deeply about. We are very excited to work with him.”
In his role as a Brennan Center Fellow, Cohen will write a regular column on law and justice, contribute to the Center’s online coverage of breaking legal news, and assist with long-term projects involving legal topics of interest to the Center.
“I have admired the work of the Brennan Center for many years and am excited to work with their team of smart and dedicated specialists,” said Cohen. “The Center is at the forefront of many of the most vital legal issues of our time, issues I care deeply about and have focused upon in my recent writing. I hope this is the beginning of a long and happy partnership.”
Most recently, Cohen is the 2012 winner of the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award for distinguished commentary for his writing in The Atlantic on the death penalty. His multi-part CBS Radio News series commemorating the attacks of September 11, 2001, “Justice in a Time of Terror,” won the 2012 Writers’ Guild Award for Outstanding Commentary.
As a legal analyst and reporter for the past 15 years, Cohen has provided analysis and commentary on thousands of legal and political events and issues. He has covered the Supreme Court nominations of four current justices, the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, the Oklahoma City bombing trials, and virtually every other high-profile criminal and civil case since 1997. In the 11 years since the terror attack of September 11, 2001, Cohen also covered and written about hundreds of terror law cases.
Today, in addition to his regular daily beat coverage, Cohen is focusing on voting rights litigation, the death penalty, judicial nominations and judicial independence, state marijuana initiatives, and new federal litigation over the rights of the nation’s mentally-ill prisoners.
In addition to his online work for The Atlantic, Cohen wrote the “Bench Conference” blog at the Washington Post and has contributed to the op-ed pages of the Denver Post, the Rocky Mountain News, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Houston Chronicle, and USA Today. His work also has appeared in The New York Times, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Baltimore Sun, the Kansas City Star, and the Detroit Free Press.