Born on July 11, 1919, in Lewiston, Maine, Coffin received an Artium Baccalaureus degree in 1940 from Bates College.

[2] He would be defeated in the 1960 Maine gubernatorial special election by Republican incumbent John H. Reed.

Coffin was nominated by President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 15, 1965, to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit vacated by Judge John Patrick Hartigan.

[1] Coffin died on December 7, 2009, at Maine Medical Center in Portland from complications following surgery to repair an aortic aneurysm.

[3] Coffin is the author of four books: Witness for AID (Houghton Mifflin 1964); The Ways of a Judge: Views from the Federal Appellate Bench (Houghton Mifflin 1980); A Lexicon of Oral Advocacy (National Institute of Trial Advocacy 1985); On Appeal: Courts, Lawyering and Judging (W.W. Norton 1994).