“Felix Cohen Was the Blackstone of Federal Indian Law:” Taking the Comparison Seriously

Abstract This paper explores the many facets of Rennard Strickland’s comparison between Sir William Blackstone, author of the 1765–69 Commentaries on the Laws of England, and Felix Cohen, architect of the 1942 Handbook of Federal Indian Law. It consists of a side by side analysis of both authors’ master works, political and educational projects, as well as general contribution to jurisprudence. It reveals that despite the stark differences between Blackstone’s work on the English common law from his professorship at Oxford in the late eighteenth century, and Cohen’s endeavors on the US federal law concerning Native Americans as a civil servant at the turn of the 1940s, there are remarkable similarities in the enterprises of legal scholarship the two jurists took on, the larger political projects they promoted, and their role in the development of legal thought. The idea that “Felix Cohen was the Blackstone of Federal Indian Law” has stylistic appeal and could have been little more than a gracious way to celebrate Cohen. An in-depth comparative examination of legal history and jurisprudence however corroborates and amplifies the soundness of the comparison.