After his 1535 promotion in Padua by Filippo Decio, he taught law at the University of Toulouse starting in 1536, in Valence (1545) and in Ferrara (1550), where he became one of the most popular professors of the time.
Even so, Coras later assisted in organising the Protestant unrests that culminated in the first French War of Religion.
He was convicted and sentenced to death for having served the Prince of Condé in 1568, and was murdered in prison following the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572.
Together with scholars such as Baron, Dumoulin, Connan and Douaren, De Coras was part of the generation of jurists that established humanist jurisprudence in France.
His works include various commentaries on the Pandects, a number of dogmatic papers on various topics, the discourse De iuris arte libellus (1560) and a compilation of legal cases, Centuria memorabilium Curiae Tholosane (1599).