In 1985, Cohen played a key role in securing the release of political prisoner Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) who had been a student of Cohen's at Harvard and who would later become vice-president of Taiwan.
Also in 1985, following the murder in San Francisco of Henry Liu, a Taiwanese-American author critical of the martial law government, Cohen served as a pro-bono representative of Liu's widow at the trial in Taipei.