Felix S. Cohen

Felix Solomon Cohen was an influential American lawyer and scholar, born on July 3, 1907, in Manhattan, New York. He passed away on October 19, 1953, at the age of 46. Cohen made significant contributions to legal philosophy and was instrumental in shaping federal Indian law and policy. He was educated at the City College of New York, Harvard University, and Columbia University, where he was an editor of the Columbia Law Review. Cohen was a leading proponent of Legal Realism, challenging traditional legal thought with his article "Transcendental Nonsense and the Functional Approach." During Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal administration, he served in the Department of the Interior from 1933 to 1947. In this role, he was the principal architect of the "Indian New Deal," which aimed to strengthen tribal governments, and he drafted the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. His wife, Lucy Kramer Cohen, assisted him in his research on Indian law. Cohen led the Indian Law Survey, which resulted in the publication of "The Handbook of Federal Indian Law" in 1941, a foundational text that established the field of Federal Indian Law. He received the Department of the Interior's Distinguished Service Award for this work. After leaving government service in 1947, Cohen practiced law privately and taught at Yale Law School, The City College of New York, and Rutgers Law School. He also published "Readings in Jurisprudence and Legal Philosophy" with his father, Morris R. Cohen, in 1951. In his private practice, Cohen notably litigated Indian land claims and secured voting rights for Native Americans in New Mexico and Arizona. He continued to write about Federal Indian Law and advocated for the rights of immigrants and ethnic minorities, with his papers later collected in "The Legal Conscience: Selected Papers of Felix S. Cohen."