Background
COHEN, BENJAMIN was born on March 6, 1938 in Gary, Indiana, United States, the son of Polish immigrants.
COHEN, BENJAMIN was born on March 6, 1938 in Gary, Indiana, United States, the son of Polish immigrants.
A brilliant student, he graduated from the University of Chicago in 1914 and earned his law degree there the following year. By 1916 he had received his doctorate in law from Harvard University, where he came under the influence of Felix Frankfurter and Louis D. Brandeis, future U.S. Supreme Court justices.
During World War I Cohen worked as an attorney for the U.S. Shipping Board. After the war he was sent to London by Brandeis to represent the American Zionists at the Paris Peace Conference and to work with Chaim Weizmann on the Palestine issue. Cohen was committed to the creation of a Jewish national home, and worked with the League of Nations toward that goal.
Upon his return to the United States, Cohen settled in New York City and opened a successful law practice specializing in corporation reorganization. He also gave legal advice to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union and the National Consumers’ League.
At the urging of Frankfurter, Cohen went to Washington, D.C., in 1933, and along with other legal and scholarly minds joined President Roosevelt’s group of elite advisers, who became known as the “brain trust.” He began as general counsel to the Public Works Administration, but eventually joined forces with Thomas G. Corcoran to write some of the Roosevelt administration’s most significant pieces of legislation during the Great Depression, among them the Securities and Exchange Act, the Public Utilities Holding Company Act, the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act. Cohen, by nature a quiet, shy man, not only framed the bold legislation, but successfully defended most of it before the Supreme Court.
Cohen and his fellow workers would hold all-night sessions to draft legislation and prepare for its defense. One of his colleagues recounts that Cohen was known to slip out of these meetings on occasion to catch the late show at the nearest movie theater. Exhausted, he would invariably soon fall asleep.
When he returned to the United States, Cohen became counsel to James Byrnes in the offices of economic stabilization and war mobilization. When Byrnes became secretary of state in 1945, he appointed Cohen counselor to the State Department.
Cohen retired in 1947, the last of Roosevelt’s inner circle to leave the government. His retirement was short-lived: the following year President Harry S. Truman drafted him as a member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations General Assembly.
He served in this capacity until 1952, when he was named to represent the United States on the U.N. Disarmament Commission. Even into John F. Kennedy’s administration Cohen continued to be active in government service, taking a position as a special assistant on disarmament.
He never really did retire, continuing to operate his own practice until the 1970s and to advise those government officials and friends who came to see him. His colleague Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., said Cohen was “the greatest public interest lawyer who ever lived. He thought not in terms of himself or of politics, but of what was best for the most.”
Quotes from others about the person
His colleague Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., said Cohen was “the greatest public interest lawyer who ever lived. He thought not in terms of himself or of politics, but of what was best for the most.”
Cohen’s partner, Corcoran, called him “the high priest... the saint.”
