Background
Educated at the University of Caen, he took his degree in law, which he practiced in Le Havre. His career in local and provincial politics, broken only by service in the infantry in World War I, included eleven years as municipal councillor and twenty-six years in the general council of his department (Seine-Inférieure).(Seine-Inferieure). He represented his constituency in the national Chamber of Deputies from 1923 until he was elected senator from Seine-InférieureSeine-Inferieure in 1936. Meanwhile, in 1931, he held the post of Under Secretary of State for the Interior in the cabinet of ThéodoreTheodore Steeg. In the joint session of the Chamber and the Senate which established the PétainPetain regime in 1940, Coty voted with the majority, but he took no part in the politics of the Vichy regime and was relieved of responsibility for the PétainPetain administration's acts in 1953. Coty was elected to the Constituent Assembly in 1945, running on the Independent Republican (conservative) ticket, and he opposed the constitution adopted in 1946, preferring among other things representation by majorities rather than by proportional allocation. He was a deputy from SeineInférieureSeineInferieure to the new National Assembly from 1946 to 1948, serving as Minister of Reconstruction in the Schuman and Marie cabinets of 1948. In September 1948 he was elected to the upper house, the Council of the Republic, of which he became one of the four vice-presidents in January 1949. In the Council he was known for his position favoring a European parliamentary union prior to the organization of a defense community, and also for his renewed championship of modification of the electoral laws. He was a member of the Council of the Republic (senate) from 1948 to 1953. Coty was not a candidate for the presidency when the combined houses met in December 1953 to select a successor to Vincent Auriol, but a deadlock developed and his name was entered in the 11th ballot. On the 13th ballot he received 477 votes and was thus elected for the term to end December 1960. He resigned on Jan. 8, 1959, when Charles de Gaulle became first president of the Fifth Republic. Coty died on Nov. 22, 1962.
