Professor Neil B. Cohen Named Chair of the Hague Conference's Digital Tokens Expert Group

Brooklyn Law School is proud to announce that Neil B. Cohen, 1901 Distinguished Research Professor of Law, has been unanimously selected as Chair of the Expert Group on Digital Tokens of the Hague Conference on Private International Law. The group is developing an international framework to address jurisdiction, choice-of-law, and judgment enforcement issues for digital assets, including cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and “electronic transferable records” (the digital equivalents of promissory notes, checks, and documents of title). 

Cohen, who retired from full-time teaching in May 2022, previously served as the Jeffrey D. Forchelli Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, teaching courses in domestic and international commercial law, contracts, and conflict of laws. He has been a leader in U.S. and international commercial law reform for more than two decades, serving on the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law for its work in developing legal principles to govern secured transactions and to increase access to credit, participating in the Hague Conference Working Group that prepared the Hague Principles on Choice of Law in International Commercial Contracts, and serving on working groups of the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (Unidroit) in developing principles for international commercial contracts as well as a model law to govern factoring transactions. Since 2009, he has served on the U.S. Department of State’s Advisory Committee on Private International Law. 

A prolific scholar, Cohen is co-author of Farnsworth, Sanger, Cohen, Brooks and Garvin, Contracts: Cases and Materials and of Twerski and Cohen, Choice of Law: Cases and Materials for a Short Course on Conflict of Laws and has written dozens of books and articles on domestic and international commercial law. He earned an S.B. from MIT and a J.D. from NYU School of Law, where he was a Root-Tilden Scholar. 

As part of his selection as Chair at the outset of the meeting in The Hague, Cohen’s qualifications were formally read into the record, and experts from countries including Israel, Argentina, Lithuania, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Canada spoke in support of his selection. 

“I am honored by this appointment and look forward to contributing to the development of global standards for digital assets,” Cohen said.