George Calvin Kern Jr. (April 19, 1926 – November 27, 2012), a native of Baltimore, Maryland, was a leading New York corporate lawyer in the 1970s and 1980s.
from the School of Public and International Affairs (now Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs) from Princeton University in 1947 after completing a senior thesis titled "War Beyond the Law - The Efforts to Outlaw War from Versailles to Nurnberg.
Kern was widely viewed among the legal professional as a uniquely colorful figure who dabbled in all aspects of corporate law.
When the mergers & acquisitions boom started in the 1970s, most established corporate law firms refused this sort of work and left it to upstarts such as Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
Kern was widely viewed as one of the early leaders at the M&A bar together with Joseph H. Flom and Martin Lipton.