Felix S. Cohen | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1907-07-03)July 3, 1907 Manhattan, New York City, U.S. |
| Died | October 19, 1953(1953-10-19) (aged 46) |
| Education | |
| Alma mater | City College of New York Harvard University Columbia University |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Legal realism |
| Main interests | Legal philosophy |
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.
Felix S. Cohen was born inManhattan, New York City, in 1907 and grew up inYonkers. Cohen attended theCity College of New York, and received an M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy fromHarvard University in 1927 and 1929, respectively. Cohen enteredColumbia Law School in 1928 and graduated in 1931. He was the legislation and book review editor of theColumbia Law Review, serving under Editor-in-ChiefHerbert Wechsler.
Cohen became a leading figure inLegal Realism, 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 theColumbia Law Review in 1935 and remains among the most-cited law review articles ever written.
Franklin Roosevelt'sNew Deal administration brought Cohen from academic study to public service. Cohen worked in the Solicitor's Office of theDepartment of the Interior from 1933 to 1947. In this position, Cohen was the primary legal architect of theIndian 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 wifeLucy 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 professorFranz Boas.[1]
In 1939 Felix Cohen became Chief of the Indian Law Survey, an effort to compile the federal laws and treaties regardingAmerican Indians. The resulting book, published in 1941 asThe 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 thatantisemitism was at play, but there were also substantial ideological differences between Cohen and his supervisors at Justice.[2] 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. TheUniversity of New Mexico 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 atYale Law School, The City College of New York, andRutgers Law School. In 1951 Cohen publishedReadings in Jurisprudence and Legal Philosophy with his father, ProfessorMorris R. Cohen. While in private practice, Cohen litigated Indian land claims, won the right to vote for American Indians inNew Mexico andArizona, 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 inThe Legal Conscience: Selected Papers of Felix S. Cohen, which was edited and assembled by his widow Lucy Kramer Cohen in 1960.[3]
