Felix Solomon Cohen (July 3, 1907 – October 19, 1953) was an American lawyer and scholar who made a lasting mark on legal philosophy and fundamentally shaped federal Indian law and policy.
Biography
Felix S. Cohen was born in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
, New York in 1907 and grew up in
Yonkers
Yonkers () is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States. Developed along the Hudson River, it is the third most populous city in the state of New York (state), New York, after New York City and Buffalo, New York, Buffalo. The popul ...
. Cohen attended the
City College of New York, and received an M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
in 1927 and 1929, respectively. Cohen entered
Columbia Law School
Columbia Law School (Columbia Law or CLS) is the law school of Columbia University, a private Ivy League university in New York City. Columbia Law is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious law schools in the world and has always ranked i ...
in 1928 and graduated in 1931. He was the legislation and book review editor of the ''
Columbia Law Review
The ''Columbia Law Review'' is a law review edited and published by students at Columbia Law School. The journal publishes scholarly articles, essays, and student notes.
It was established in 1901 by Joseph E. Corrigan and John M. Woolsey, who se ...
'', serving under Editor-in-Chief
Herbert Wechsler.
Cohen became a leading figure in
Legal Realism
Legal realism is a naturalistic approach to law. It is the view that jurisprudence should emulate the methods of natural science, i.e., rely on empirical evidence. Hypotheses must be tested against observations of the world.
Legal realists b ...
, a legal movement that challenged the Formalist idea that legal principles could be discerned in the abstract, separate from their enforcement, judicial interpretation, or impact on society. Cohen's most famous contribution to this debate was "Transcendental Nonsense and the Functional Approach", which ran in the ''Columbia Law Review'' in 1935 and remains among the most-cited law review articles ever written.
Franklin Roosevelt's
New Deal administration brought Cohen from academic study to public service. Cohen worked in the Solicitor's Office of the
Department of the Interior from 1933 to 1947. In this position, Cohen was the primary legal architect of the
Indian New Deal, a federal policy that sought to strengthen tribal governments and reduce federal domination of Indian tribes. Cohen was the drafter of the centerpiece legislation of this era, the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. In his research on Indian law, he was assisted by his wife Lucy Kramer Cohen (1907-2007). She had studied mathematics and anthropology at Barnard College in the 1920s and earned her master's degree in mathematics from Columbia University. With background in anthropology, economics, and statistics, she had worked for anthropology professor
Franz Boas.
In 1939 Felix Cohen became Chief of the Indian Law Survey, an effort to compile the federal laws and treaties regarding
American Indians. The resulting book, published in 1941 as ''The Handbook of Federal Indian Law'', became much more than a simple survey. The Handbook was the first to show how hundreds of years of diverse treaties, statutes, and decisions formed a comprehensive whole. Today, Cohen is credited with creating the modern field of Federal Indian Law. Although the treatise began as a joint project between the Department of Interior and the Department of Justice, Justice fired Cohen from the project and terminated the survey. The motivations of Justice are not entirely clear. Cohen seemed to believe that
anti-Semitism
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
was at play, but there were also substantial ideological differences between Cohen and his supervisors at Justice. Justice may have been concerned that the book would be too powerful a tool for Indian tribes. Ultimately, the book was published, but under the auspices of Interior alone. For this work, Cohen received the department's Distinguished Service Award in 1948. The
University of New Mexico
The University of New Mexico (UNM; es, Universidad de Nuevo México) is a public research university in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Founded in 1889, it is the state's flagship academic institution and the largest by enrollment, with over 25,400 ...
reissued the initial Handbook in 1971, and updated versions of the Handbook were published in 1982 and 2005.
Cohen left government service in 1947 after federal policy shifted from one of support for tribal governments to that of terminating tribal sovereign status. He then entered private legal practice and taught legal philosophy at
Yale Law School
Yale Law School (Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824 and has been ranked as the best law school in the United States by '' U.S. News & Worl ...
, The City College of New York, and
Rutgers Law School
Rutgers Law School is the law school of Rutgers University, with classrooms in Newark and Camden, New Jersey. It is the largest public law school and the 10th largest law school, overall, in the United States. Each class in the three-year J.D. pr ...
. In 1951 Cohen published ''Readings in Jurisprudence and Legal Philosophy'' with his father, Professor
Morris R. Cohen
Morris Raphael Cohen ( be, Мо́рыс Рафаэ́ль Ко́эн; July 25, 1880 – January 28, 1947) was an American philosopher, lawyer, and legal scholar who united pragmatism with logical positivism and linguistic analysis. This union coale ...
. While in private practice, Cohen litigated Indian land claims, won the right to vote for American Indians in
New Mexico
)
, population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano)
, seat = Santa Fe
, LargestCity = Albuquerque
, LargestMetro = Tiguex
, OfficialLang = None
, Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ke ...
and
Arizona
Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...
, and successfully challenged Arizona's practice of denying social security benefits to Indians. He also continued to write and advocate regarding Federal Indian Law, publishing The Erosion of Indian Rights 1950-1953: A Case Study in Bureaucracy, 62 Yale L. J. 348 (1952–53), shortly before his untimely death in 1953. Cohen had also become increasingly committed to fighting other forms of oppression, in particular to securing the rights of immigrants and ethnic minorities. His major articles are anthologized in ''The Legal Conscience: Selected Papers of Felix S. Cohen'', which was edited and assembled by his widow Lucy Kramer Cohen in 1960.
Selected works
*
*
*
*
References
Further reading
* Dalia Tsuk Mitchell, Architect of Justice: Felix Cohen and the Founding of American Legal Pluralism (2007)
* Nell Newton, et al. eds., Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law (2005)
* Kevin K. Washburn, Felix Cohen, Anti-Semitism and Federal Indian Law, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1338795 (2009)
External links
* Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law (1941 ed.): http://thorpe.ou.edu/cohen.html
Felix S. Cohen Papers Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
* Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law (2005 ed.): https://web.archive.org/web/20080823175343/http://bookstore.lexis.com/bookstore/product/57318.html
* Legal Theory Lexicon: Realist Deconstruction of Formalist Legal Categories: http://lsolum.typepad.com/legal_theory_lexicon/2006/09/legal_theory_le_2.html
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cohen, Felix S.
1907 births
1953 deaths
Columbia Law School alumni
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
City College of New York alumni
American people of Belarusian-Jewish descent
Townsend Harris High School alumni
Scholars of Native American law
Jewish American attorneys
Lawyers from New York City
People from Manhattan
Solicitors of the United States Department of the Interior
20th-century American Jews