Laurent Cohen-Tanugi is a Paris-based international lawyer, policy adviser and public intellectual.
An alumnus of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, of the Institute of Political Studies of Paris and of the Harvard Law School, Laurent Cohen-Tanugi holds an agrégation in French literature from the University of Paris.
A member of the Paris and New York Bars, his practice focuses on international arbitration, competition law, and policy advisory work. In the fall of 2007, he was appointed by the French government to lead a task force on the future of the European Union’s Lisbon Strategy, ahead of the French Presidency of the EU (Beyond Lisbon: A European Strategy For Globalisation, Peter Lang, 2008, www.euroworld2015.eu).
He is the author of several seminal books, including Le Droit sans l'Etat (PUF, 1985), a comparative essay on the French and American legal and political traditions, prefaced by Professor Stanley Hoffmann of Harvard University, which he will revise and update during his stay at the Stanford Humanities Center; La Métamorphose de la Démocratie (Odile Jacob, 1989), on the changes affecting the French and European democratic cultures since the late sixties; L'Europe en danger(Fayard, 1992), anticipating the current crisis of political Europe. His latest English-language works include An Alliance At Risk: The United States And Europe After September 11 (Johns Hopkins University Press, September 2003), exploring the present state and future prospects of transatlantic relations, and, most recently, The Shape of the World to Come: Charting the Geopolitics of a New Century (Columbia University Press, 2008), in which he takes on both the advocates and the vituperators of globalization (Columbia University Press, 2008), which he will discuss at length during his time on campus. He will also present an in-depth analysis of the mediterranean agenda(s) of the European Union; his visit is co-sponsored by the Mediterranean Studies Forum.
Laurent Cohen-Tanugi will be visiting Stanford from mid-February to mid-March, 2010.