Inventory of the Papers of Edwin S. Cohen

Edwin S. Cohen was born in Richmond, Virginia, on 27 September 1914. He grew up in that city and at age fifteen entered the University of Richmond. Three years later he entered law school at the University of Virginia, where he was an excellent student and served on the editorial board of the Virginia Law Review. He received his law degree in 1936, before his twenty-first birthday.

After law school, Cohen went to New York and worked from 1936 to 1949 as an associate with Sullivan & Cromwell. There he began to specialize in taxation and investment matters, and afterward gave lectures on the subjects. In 1949 he formed the firm Root, Barrett, Cohen, Knapp and Smith with some of his former law classmates, and continued doing tax work for the mutual fund industry. He remained with that practice until 1965.

Cohen had always been interested in teaching, and in 1963 Dean Hardy Dillard offered him the opportunity to teach law at his alma mater. For two terms he commuted from New York City to Charlottesville twice a month to teach a tax course. After the second course, he was offered a visiting professorship and, a year later, an appointment to the faculty. In 1968, he was named to the Joseph M. Hartfield Chair.

In 1969, the Nixon administration designated Cohen Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy to work with Secretary of Treasury David M. Kennedy and Under Secretary Charles E. Walker. In 1972, he was appointed Under Secretary of the Treasury, serving in that position until his resignation in 1973.

After his stint in the Treasury Department, Cohen resumed teaching at Virginia and practicing law with Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. Later, he became partner and senior counselor at the firm until his retirement in 1986.

Cohen served on numerous committees, task forces, councils, and clubs throughout his career. From the early 1950s, he acted as consultant in various tax matters for the American Law Institute. In 1956, he became part of a seven-member advisory group for the House Ways and Means Committee to consider the revision of the corporate tax rules in the federal tax law. He drafted a revised statute and a report explaining the group's recommendations for corporations, partnerships, estates, trusts, and tax administration.

As a young tax lawyer in New York, he was part of the Tax Forum, a group of junior tax lawyers that presented papers on tax subjects once a month. Later, as a senior lawyer, he was a member of the Tax Club. His participation in the work of the ABA included membership in the Section of Taxation, of which he became chairman in 1956 and member of the governing council in 1958. In the 1960s, he served on a number of federal advisory groups or task forces: in 1965, President Johnson's Task Force to Improve the World-Wide Competitive Effectiveness of American Business; in 1967, the advisory group for the Commissioner of Internal Revenue; and in 1968, the Task Force on Federal Tax Policy to make recommendations to President-elect Nixon. Between 1968-1971 he worked with the legislators of Virginia, first as a counselor for the Virginia Income Tax Commission, and later as a member of the Virginia Income Tax Conformity Study Commission. In addition, Cohen was a member of the American College Tax Counsel, American Judicature Society, D.C. Bar Association, New York State Bar Association, Order of the Coif, Raven Society, Phi Beta Kappa, Omicron Delta Kappa, Phi Delta Epsilon, and Phi Epsilon Pi, among many others.

Mr. Cohen died on January 12, 2006.