Cohen, Maxwell
COHEN, MAXWELL
COHEN, MAXWELL (1910–1998), Canadian legal scholar and teacher, public servant, international jurist. Cohen grew up in a secular middle-class family in Winnipeg's North End, and received his B.A. (1930) and LL.B. (1934) from the University of Manitoba, and LL.M. (1936) from Northwestern University with a thesis on Habeas Corpus. In 1937–38 he was research fellow at Harvard Law School studying anti-trust law. This led to a position as counsel for the Combines Investigation Commission (1938–40) and with the Department of Munitions and Supply (1940–41). Following a year freelancing for the Christian Science Monitor and several Canadian journals, he joined the Canadian army, reaching the rank of major, and in 1945–46 was head of Economics and Political Science at the Khaki University for Canadian soldiers in England. Drawn to education, he joined McGill University Law School in 1946 where he became an innovative legal educator. As dean of the Law School (1964–69), he introduced the National Programme combining training in common and civil law, subsequently McGill Law School's most distinctive characteristic. An acknowledged expert in international, constitutional and labor law, in 1951 he was named special assistant to the director general of the un Technical Assistance Program and in 1959–60 a member of the Canadian delegation to the un. He was frequently called upon to chair public inquiries.
Wartime revelations of Nazi atrocities and the birth of Israel awakened a sense of Jewish identity, and Cohen became very active in Montreal and national Jewish life, particularly through the Canadian Zionist Federation and Canadian Jewish Congress. As an English-speaking federalist in Quebec, he joined the Liberal Party and served as adviser on foreign and constitutional policies and relations with Israel in the 1950s. In 1965 he hoped to run for election in the heavily Jewish Montreal federal riding of Mount Royal but withdrew his candidacy in favor of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. He went on to head a Special Committee on Hate Propaganda in 1965–66 and the Royal Commission on Labour Legislation in Newfoundland in 1969–72 and was special counsel on constitutional law for the Government of New Brunswick (1967–70), president of the Quebec Advisory Council on the Administration of Justice (1972–74), and chair of the Federal Advisory Committee on the Law of the Sea (1971–74). From 1974 to 1979 he chaired the Canadian section of the International Joint Commission examining Canada-U.S. boundary waters. Leaving McGill as emeritus professor in 1978, he became professor of law and scholar in residence at the University of Ottawa (1980–89) and adjunct professor at Carleton University. From 1981 to 1985 he represented Canada as ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice, the Hague. A prolific writer throughout his career, the range and significance of his interests are apparent from the chapters he wrote in a 1993 Festschrift: international law, human rights, dispute settlement, public law, legal history, and the theory and practice of legal education. He received honors from the Canadian Bar Association, the Canadian Council of International Law, the Council of Christians and Jews, the Manitoba Bar Association, and Columbia University, and was awarded eight honorary doctorates and the Order of Canada (1976).
bibliography:
W. Kaplan and D. McRae (eds.), Law, Policy, and International Justice: Essays in Honour of Maxwell Cohen (1993).
[James Walker (2nd ed.)]