Commonwealth of Massachusetts
United States Air Force
United States Department of Justice
Boston University
Commonwealth of Massachusetts
United States Air Force
United States Department of Justice
Carl Gerald Coben was born on August 21, 1928, in Winthrop, Massachusetts, a town in Suffolk County near Boston. The Boston area later became the setting of his education and first professional posts.
His early legal career developed in Massachusetts, where he qualified as a lawyer in 1953 and entered public service in Boston. His subsequent work took him to Washington, D.C., and New York City, and then to New Jersey, where he spent the rest of his career.
Coben received a bachelor's degree from Boston University in 1950 and a Juris Doctor from the same university in 1953. Boston University traces its origins to the Newbury Biblical Institute, founded by Methodist leaders in Newbury, Vermont, in 1839. The school moved to Boston in 1867, and the Massachusetts Legislature chartered it as Boston University in 1869.
The university's School of Law opened in 1872 as its second department. It is the third-oldest law school in New England, after Harvard Law School and Yale Law School, and it trained lawyers for the state's courts and government offices during the decades when Coben studied there.
Coben began his legal career in public service in 1953 as an assistant attorney general for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in Boston, a post he held until 1954. The attorney general's office is the Commonwealth's principal legal office, representing the state in civil and criminal matters. In 1953 he was admitted to the Massachusetts bar and to the United States District Court for Massachusetts.
From 1954 to 1957 he served in the United States Air Force, rising to the rank of captain. During the same years he worked as a trial attorney for the United States Department of Justice in Washington. The Department of Justice, established in 1870, is the federal executive department that enforces federal law and represents the government in court. The Air Force became a separate military service under the National Security Act of 1947, and in 1956 Coben was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States.
From 1957 to 1967 he worked as a supervisory trial attorney for the National Labor Relations Board in Washington and New York City. The board was created by the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which guaranteed workers the right to organize and bargain collectively, and its authority was extended by the Taft-Hartley amendments of 1947 and the Landrum-Griffin amendments of 1959. Its work involved supervising union representation elections and investigating unfair labor practices.
In 1967 Coben became general counsel of Servisco in Hillside, New Jersey, and in the same year he was admitted to the New Jersey bar and the United States District Court for New Jersey. A corporate filing for Servisco, Inc. lists its principal address at 470 Mundet Place in Hillside and records a filing date of 1946. He was later admitted to the District of Columbia Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals in 1973 and to the Third Circuit in 1978. Coben died in Tampa, Florida, on May 26, 1988.
Coben belonged to several professional and fraternal bodies. The American Bar Association is a national professional association of American lawyers that promotes legal education and professional standards, and the New Jersey Bar Association serves attorneys practicing in that state.
The American Arbitration Association is a nonprofit organization that administers arbitration and other methods of resolving disputes. Freemasonry is a fraternal order organized in local lodges that emphasizes fellowship, ritual, and charitable activity, and Coben was affiliated with Masonic lodges.
Quotes from others about the person
In a Parade essay, his son Harlan Coben described Carl Gerald Coben as a good father.
Coben married Barbara Ann Kronberg on October 23, 1954. The couple had three children: Lawrence S., Harlan G., and Craig B. Coben. Harlan Coben later became an author, and in a personal essay in Parade magazine he wrote about his father.
