Jean Koh Peters

Jean Koh Peters is the Sol Goldman Clinical Professor Emeritus of Law at Yale Law School. An expert in children, families, and the law, as well as asylum law, she joined Yale Law School in 1989 as an associate clinical professor and supervising attorney for The Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization. She was named clinical professor in 1993 and was named the Sol Goldman Clinical Professor of Law in October 2009. She previously was an assistant clinical professor at Columbia Law School and associate director of Columbia’s Child Advocacy Clinic. Prior to that, she served as a staff attorney in the Juvenile Rights Division of the Legal Aid Society in New York City, after clerking for the late William P. Gray of the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. From 1992 to 2017, she supervised students representing children, most recently in the Sol and Lillian Goldman Family Advocacy for Children and Youth Clinic. From 1992 to 2018, she supervised students representing asylum seekers in the Immigration Legal Services Clinic.

Professor Peters has published numerous articles and is author of the book, Representing Children in Child Protective Proceedings: Ethical and Practical Dimensions. She is the co-author, with Mark Weisberg of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, of A Teacher’s Reflection Book: Stories, Exercises, Invitations. She is also the co-creator, with Susan J. Bryant of CUNY School of Law, of the Habits of Cross-Cultural Lawyering, a curriculum now taught in law school clinics around the country. Professors Peters and Bryant also presented extensively and wrote about talking about race in law classrooms and clinics. Peters also conducted trainings for U.S. asylum officers from 1995 to 2018. Among other awards, she received the Society of American Law Teachers Great Teacher Award jointly with Susan J. Bryant in 2016; the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Justice in Action Award in 2012; the Yale Law Women Teaching Award in 1999; and the Yale Law Women Lifetime Excellence Award in 2018. She holds a B.A. magna cum laude from Radcliffe and a J.D. from Harvard.