Thomas Jefferson School of Law (TJSL), is an independent law school in San Diego, California. It offers a Juris Doctor, and three Master of Laws programs, including one that is exclusively online, as well as a combined J.D./M.B.A. with San Diego State University. Its law program is accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA).

The Thomas Jefferson School of Law was originally founded in 1969 as the San Diego campus of the for profit Western State University College of Law and operated as such until 1995. It became independent in 1995 and received provisional accreditation from the ABA in 1996. It was given full ABA accreditation in 2001 and joined the Association of American Law Schools in 2008.

In January 2011, TJSL opened a new campus located in the East Village district of downtown San Diego. The campus is an eight-story 305,000-square-foot (28,300 m²) building designed to comply with Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building requirements; it contains classrooms, a two-story law library (containing 1,250,598 volumes), offices, collaborative work areas, and a legal clinic. A variety of fossils found during construction, including mammoth and whale bones, which were donated to the San Diego Natural History Museum.

Thomas Jefferson School is a small coeducational boarding and day school located in St. Louis, Missouri, and consistently rated among the United States' top boarding schools for academic standards and college matriculation.

Thomas Jefferson School, or TJ as it is known to students and faculty, was founded in 1946 by Robin McCoy, Charles E. Merrill Jr. (son of a founder of Merrill Lynch;also started the Commonwealth School in Massachusetts), and Graham Spring. They planned to establish, in the Midwest, a boarding school with academic standards equal to those of its more famous New England peers. They also tried to create a school whose governance rested with the faculty, patterned after the colleges that comprise Oxford and Cambridge Universities, which are faculty-governed institutions. Teachers who remain at the school for a relatively long period of time automatically become Board members; there are also a number of outside, nonfaculty Board members drawn from the alumni, past parents, and friends of the school.

Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 (April 2, 1743 O.S.) – July 4, 1826) was an American Founding Father, the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence (1776) and the third President of the United States (1801–1809). At the beginning of the American Revolution, Jefferson served in the Continental Congress, representing Virginia. He then served as a wartime Governor of Virginia (1779–1781). Just after the war ended, from mid-1784 Jefferson served as a diplomat, stationed in Paris, initially as a commissioner to help negotiate commercial treaties. In May 1785, he became the United States Minister to France. He was the first United States Secretary of State (1790–1793) during the administration of President George Washington. Upon resigning his office, with his close friend James Madison he organized the Democratic-Republican Party. Elected Vice-President in 1796, under his opponent John Adams, Jefferson with Madison secretly wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which attempted to nullify the Alien and Sedition Acts.

A law school (also known as a school of law or college of law) is an institution specializing in legal education.

The oldest civil law faculty in Canada offering law degrees was established in 1848 at McGill University in Montreal, and the oldest common law faculty in Canada offering law degrees was established in 1883 at Dalhousie University in Halifax. The typical law degree required to practice law in Canada is now the Juris Doctor, which requires previous university coursework and is similar to the first law degree in the United States, except there is some scholarly content in the coursework (such as an academic research paper required in most schools). The programs consist of three years, and have similar content in their mandatory first year courses. Beyond first year and the minimum requirements for graduation, course selection is elective with various concentrations such as business law, international law, natural resources law, criminal law, Aboriginal law, etc. Some schools, however, have not made the switch from LL.B. to the J.D. - one notable university that has not made the switch is McGill University.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor of law at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, San Diego, California, and a former president of the National Lawyers Guild.

In 1978 Cohn received a job in the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. According to her biography, she also "participated in delegations to Cuba, China, Russia, and Yugoslavia" early on her career.

Cohn strongly opposed the "U.S.-engineered deportation" of Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo. She accused the West of targeting Serbian civilians and stated the deportation to the ICC was "a crime against the people of Yugoslavia".

Cohn has contributed online commentary criticizing the former Bush administration to web sites such as MWC News, AlterNet, CounterPunch, CommonDreams, After Downing Street, ZNet, and the Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG). She also states that she has been a commentator for the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR and Pacifica Radio.