David S. Cohen's scholarship explores the intersection of constitutional law and gender, emphasizing how the law impacts abortion provision, including violence against abortion providers, as well as sex segregation and masculinity. He also researches voting anomalies in the Supreme Court.
In the wake of the reversal of Roe v. Wade, Professor Cohen has been one of the leading national experts on abortion. Along with his coauthors Greer Donley (Pitt) and Rachel Rebouché (Temple), he has written law review articles about the aftermath published in the Columbia Law Review and Stanford Law Review Online and has a forthcoming article appearing in the Stanford Law Review. The trio have published four op-eds in the New York Times as well as many in other outlets, including Slate, the Atlantic, and Politico. Their work was cited by the dissenting opinion in Dobbs and countless scholars and has been the inspiration for at least 17 state laws passed to protect abortion rights in the face of the Supreme Court's reversal. He is also working on a new book with Carole Joffe (UCSF) about the aftermath of Dobbs.
Professor Cohen received his JD from Columbia University School of Law, where he was named a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, received the Public Interest Commitment Award and two Columbia Human Rights Fellowships, and was a research assistant for Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw. He was managing editor of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review and articles editor of the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law.
After clerking for Justice Alan B. Handler of the New Jersey Supreme Court and Judge Warren J. Ferguson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Professor Cohen worked as a fellow and staff attorney for the Women's Law Project in Philadelphia. There, he handled a range of cases involving reproductive rights, sex discrimination under Title IX, health insurance coverage of contraceptives, health care for women prisoners and family rights for gay and lesbian couples. Professor Cohen worked on several U.S. Supreme Court cases, including representing the plaintiffs in Ferguson v. City of Charleston.
Before coming to Drexel, he was a lecturer-in-law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He also held adjunct professor positions at the University of Pennsylvania and Long Island University.
