Courses Offered:

Contracts and Sales
Constitutional Law
Criminal Law

Professional Biographical Information:

Dan Coenen has served on the University of Georgia law faculty since 1987 and teaches contracts and sales, constitutional law and criminal law. He was named a J. Alton Hosch Professor in 1997, and in 2005 Coenen was awarded the title of University Professor. The University Professorship, awarded to no more than one UGA faculty member per year, is reserved for professors who have had a significant impact on the university in addition to fulfilling their normal academic responsibilities.

His scholarship includes: The Story of "The Federalist": How Hamilton and Madison Reconceived America (2007), Constitutional Law: The Commerce Clause (2004), "A Rhetoric for Ratification: The Argument of 'The Federalist' and its Impact on Constitutional Interpretation" in the Duke Law Journal (2006), "The Rehnquist Court, Structural Due Process, and Semisubstantive Constitutional Review" in the Southern California Law Review (2002), "Institutional Arrangements and Individual Rights: A Comment on Professor Tribe's Critique of the Modern Court's Treatment of Constitutional Liberty" in the University of Illinois Law Review (2001), "A Constitution of Collaboration: Protecting Fundamental Values with Second-Look Rules of Interbranch Dialogue" in the William & Mary Law Review (2001), "Business Subsidies and the Dormant Commerce Clause" in The Yale Law Journal (1998), "Suspect Linkage: The Interplay of State Taxing and Spending Measures in the Application of Constitutional Antidiscrimination Rules" in the Michigan Law Review (1997, with Professor Walter Hellerstein), and "State User Fees and the Dormant Commerce Clause" in the Vanderbilt Law Review (1997).

Coenen received the Josiah Meigs Award, the university's highest honor for excellence in teaching, in 1998. He has been selected by students on multiple occasions as the recipient of the Faculty Book Award for teaching excellence, the Professional Responsibility Award and the John C. O'Byrne Award for significant contributions furthering student/faculty relations. Coenen served as a UGA senior teaching fellow in 1999-2000. He was inducted into the university's elite Teaching Academy in 2000 and was elected as a member of the organization's executive committee the following year.

Coenen demonstrates the role of the lawyer as a public servant through his active involvement in the local community. He helped lead the campaign to pass a Special Local Options Sales Tax (SPLOST) in 1994, then served as a member of the Citizens SPLOST Advisory Committee, a group appointed to oversee implementation of projects funded by it. He also has served on the board of directors of the Oconee River Land Trust, the Sandy Creek Nature Center, and the Athens Grow Green Coalition and is currently a board member of Community Connection, among other civic commitments. For nearly a decade, he coached basketball teams for the Athens-Clarke County Recreation Department.

Coenen served as judicial law clerk to Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court and Chief Judge Clement F. Haynsworth Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit prior to joining the law firm of Robinson, Bradshaw & Hinson, P.A., in Charlotte, N.C., where he later became a partner.

Coenen earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin and a law degree from Cornell, where he served as editor in chief of the Cornell Law Review. He and his wife Sally have three children: Michael, Amy and Claire.