John Kernochan was loved and respected by many colleagues and students.  Below are excerpts form the Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts, which ran a tribute to him in the Fall 1990, 15 Colum-VLA J.L. & Arts 1:

In appreciation for his perennial guidance, we, the students at the Journal of Law & the Arts, have decided to dedicate this issue to Professor John M. Kernochan, in honor of his recently acquired status as professor emeritus.

Those of us who are involved with law and the arts at Columbia would like to acknowledge publicly our debt to Professor Kernochan. Many of us still remember our first week at the Law School, finding, in our first class, Professor Kernochan, with his gentle demeanorm, in lieu of the expected Professor Kingsfield. It was as if someone had decided to send a message that we would be in good hands for the next three years.  Full text

William M. Borchard:

My first-year class was the first to use the current law school building.  In a physical space no one had used before, we were embarking on a voyage to explore the unfamiliar seas of “The Law.”  We felt adrift, as most first-year law students feel. 

One of the required first-year courses was Legal Method.  It concerned, among other things, the techniques of construing the meaning of statutes.  This course was taught by Professor Kernochan.

 I suspect that few of us can remember particular things we learned in law school.  One of the things that I remember was being taught to “Kernochanize” a statute; that is, to identify the particular operative words in the statute to be construed, highlight them and apply rules of statutory construction to them.  Full text

André Françon:

I am delighted to speak here of my friend Professor Kernochan, whom I have the good fortune to have known for many years and whom I greet each time with great pleasure, at whatever spot on the globe we may be (for the very nature of intellectual property creates for its advocates the sweet obligation of being frequent travelers).  Full text

Jane C. Ginsburg:

In dedicating this volume to Professor John M. Kernochan, the Journal of Law & the Arts is recognizing Jack’s prolific accomplishments and untiring devotion both to the field of law and the arts and to the students of Columbia Law School.  I am glad to contribute to this appreciation, noting, however, that it cannot match the gratitude and respect I feel for him.  Full text

Paul Goldstein:

Jack Kernochan wears several hats – all stylishly.

 Jack Kerncochan is the academic entrepreneur par excellence, and in the very best sense of that term, a hat he has worn since his early days at Columbia’s Legislative Drafting Fund.  Jack has more recently centered his entrepreneurial energies on authors’ rights, conceiving and nurturing Columbia’s Center for Law and the Arts – an organization whose annual report now runs to several pages listing the Center’s varied activities – and presiding over the United States group of the premier international authors’ rights organization, the Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale.  Full text

When I met Jack Kernochan, he was a third-year law student and I was in my second year.  We were sharing the Legislative Drafting Research Fund student office on the sixth floor of Kent Hall, and Jack and Russell Train, another upperclassman, regarded me andy my contemporaries with the appropriate tolerant disdain that successful seniors the (and now) have for their younger contemporaries.  The time was 1948, and we were all World War II veterans going through Columbia Law School under an optional “three years in two” accelerated program.  We all made it, but it left us a little tired for the next forty years.  Full text

What can one say about Jack Kernochan that does not go without saying?

Jack Kernochan has been a master teacher for generations and gernerations of law students.  He has been a master scholar, from his early essay on judicial review to his magisterial writings on intellectual property.  He exemplifies quality and inspires and insists on it in others.  He has promoted, organized, edited and improved the work of others – of countless students and of many colleagues.  For half a century he has been an exemplary citizen of Columbia, his community, his country and the larger world.  Full text

Jack Kernochan is truly, in the old fashioned sense, a gentleman and a scholar.  He is, as we admirers know, many other things.  But his accomplishments have been so enduring precisely because they are the product of both an extraordinarily warm and sympathetic human being and a brilliant student and expositor of intellectual property law.  Full text

Morton L. Janklow:

Little did I know, back in 1952, that the lanky, tweed-jacketed instructor in some no longer remembered course (could it have been Legal Method?) would one day be my friend and colleague, Jack Kernochan.  He was then very serious, a little austere and only just beginning to find his way through the thickets of teaching at the Law School.

Over the years as a practicing lawyer involved seriously in the world of the arts, I kept running into his name and occasionally even his person, but almost always in the context of his work as an expert in the field of copyright law.  I have, I must confess, always considered the details of copyrights as a somewhat arcane mystery, and I would occasionally call on his expertise to deal with issues beyond my copyright competence.  Full text

Bernard Korman:

Joi de vivre.  Love of Adelaide, music, teaching, food, friends, the French and good company.  Responsibility to students.  Caring concern for composers.  Personal warmth.  Scholarship.  Always busy and always ready to contribute to authors’ causes.

These are some of the thoughts and phrases that came quickly to mind when I was asked to write a few lines about Jack Kernochan for the Journal of Law & the Arts.  I don’t remember precisely when I first met him.  It was many years ago, probably in Herman Finkelstein’s office at ASCAP in connection with some problem faced by the “serious” music publisher members of ASCAP.  For many years Jack ran a music publishing company he inherited from his father.  Full text

Theodora Zavin:

From time to time during the last twenty-five years, Jack Kernochan asked me to address his copyright seminar.  I always finished this pleasurable chore with feelings of envy.  Some of it was envy of Jack for being able to spend so much of his time with bright, exciting young minds.  Some of it was envy for his students for having the opportunity to learn from and with one of the most stimulating teachers I have ever encountered.

Jack’s copyright seminar was a brilliant combination of scholarly analysis of the law and a kind of hands-on experience in analyzing everything from contracts to legislation that must have made this one of the most memorable courses that his students experienced.  Full text