ISSN 1062-7421
Vol. 12 No. 4 (April 2002) pp. 178-182.
RENEGADE LAWYER: THE LIFE OF J. L. COHEN by Laurel Sefton MacDowell. Toronto: Published for the Osgoode
Society for Canadian Legal History by the University of Toronto Press, 2001. 385 pp. Cloth $60.00. ISBN: 0-8020-3513-2.
Reviewed by Renee Ann Cramer, Department of Political Science, California State University at Long Beach.
In RENEGADE LAWYER, a biography of J. L. Cohen, historian Laurel Sefton MacDowell has offered an in-depth view
of the brief, but exceedingly influential career, of a trailblazing Canadian labor lawyer and civil liberties
advocate. MacDowell also narrates the tragic bifurcation of Cohen's personal and public lives, which, she argues,
resulted in his assault on a former mistress, imprisonment and disbarment, and eventual death in a probable suicide.
Telling both stories-the story of a brilliant legal mind and advocate for the poor, and the story of a mentally
ill, womanizing, Nembutal addict-is a difficult and perhaps thankless feat. Certainly, Cohen, as a hero to the
Canadian labor movement and a nemesis of anti-labor government officials, remains a polarizing figure in Canadian
politics. Though his eventual downfall at the age of 50 tarnished his career, it did not detract from the strides
he made for pro-labor legislation in Canada.
It is primarily to bring to light Cohen's contribution to Canada's labor policy that MacDowell undertook this work.
In Cohen's work as a labor lawyer, he was engaged in almost every key [labor] dispute until 1945, counseling,
sometimes guiding, and always defending his clients. He worked tirelessly, not only to develop his practice and
build his reputation it the legal community, but most of all because he was deeply committed to the principle of
collective bargaining in industry and to his belief that working people had a right to organize, to engage in politics,
and to earn a decent living (p. 84).
To these ends, Cohen had three distinct areas of practice. From 1927-1931, as detailed in MacDowell's second chapter,
Cohen was retained as a lawyer for the Communist Party of Canada (CPC). Though he was never a member of the CPC,
Cohen was sympathetic, and seen by many as a "fellow-traveler" (p. 33). He engaged in the defense of
CPC leaders as they faced criminal charges for propagandizing and labor activism. The chapter becomes most interesting
when MacDowell discusses Cohen's involvement in the investigation of the deaths of two Lumber Workers' Industrial
Union activists, Viljo Rosvall and John Voutilainen, who were apparently murdered in an effort by management to
halt organizing activities.
MacDowell's narrative of Cohen's life gains steam and verve as she details his overlapping legal work as a labor
lawyer in an arena broader than CPC politics (Chapter 4: Labour Lawyer, 1936-1943) and as a defender of civil liberties
under attack after Canada joined the allied efforts in World War II (Chapter 7: Defending Wartime Internees, 1939-1943).
In his work in both areas, Cohen was a radical intellect, and ahead of his time. As a labor lawyer, he had
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two main concerns: to gain collective agreements and bargaining rights for workers, and to protect strikers and
union activists from discrimination (p. 91). Cohen was a rather prolific writer, and penned a number of pamphlets
and short books that made his position on collective bargaining rights quite clear. He consistently "linked
collective bargaining to industrial democracy" (p. 134). Cohen's recommendations for labor legislation, made
during his later (1943) service on the National War Labour Board (NWLB), allow us to see the extent of his policy
goals and beliefs. In a minority report to the NWLB, Cohen detailed a 16-point plan for industrial democracy.
Among his recommendations were a national labor code to be administered by a tripartite board equipped with enforcement
mechanisms, as
well as:
"compulsory collective bargaining, a list of unfair and hence forbidden labour practices, an end to discrimination
against workers for union activity, . a ban on company unions . compulsory arbitration of unresolved disputes during
the life of a contract … voluntary conciliation by permanent boards …. joint management-labour production councils
. a flexible [wage control] policy . [with a] mandatory cost-of-living bonus for male workers at the maximum rate
across the board … equal pay for equal work for female workers and younger males … [and] revision of the cost-of-living
index and changes in the tax laws so that
industrial workers would benefit" (pp. 134-35).
Several of Cohen's proposals, such as the joint management-labor production councils, cost-of-living increases
and equal pay provisions, went unimplemented. However, Cohen's tenure on the NWLB did ensure that compulsory collective
bargaining would become law in Canada (P.C. 1003, the Wartime Labour Relations Regulations, in February, 1944).
P.C. 1003 defined unfair labor practices, outlawed company unions, and established a tripartite administrative
tribunal-all policies that grew from Cohen's minority report.
MacDowell's discussion of Cohen's time on the NWLB is particularly of interest to scholars of administrative law
and theory. She makes the astute observation that Cohen, as the pro-labor appointee, felt he was in the roles
of advocate and representative. His view of his role on the board conflicted with the pro-industry, and pro-government
appointees, who viewed their role as neutral arbiter and fact-finder. Although Cohen viewed his position on the
Board as a policymaker (p. 143) the other board members viewed their role as judicial. As a result, Cohen's work
and recommendations were seen as "partisan and neither tactful nor ingratiating" (p. 135); clearly Cohen
rejected the bureaucratic culture developed by the remaining members of the Board (p. 139). After confronting,
and being unable to bridge this chasm a number of times, Cohen was removed from the Board in 1944.
Simultaneous to his busy labor law practice, and just prior to his appointment on the NWLB, Cohen also acted as
defense counsel to a number of individuals persecuted during the war years for their religious and political views.
The War Measures Act of 1939--and its proclamation of the Defense of Canada Regulations (DOCR)--made necessary
his defense work on behalf of Jehovah's Witnesses, Communists, and the Ukrainian Labour Farmer Temple Association
(ULFTA). Under DOCR, Canadian police had
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"sweeping powers to arrest and detain without charge both alien and Canadian-born persons, considered to be
a threat to national security" (p. 3). This was a power that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) applied
with vigor, and, on several occasions, brutality.
Cohen was unsuccessful in gaining the release of many of the defendants he represented. His role in their defense
was, rather, to ensure that the public was aware of the practices of the Canadian government in imprisoning radicals
and those whose religious beliefs were threatening to mainstream Canadian society. MacDowell's history of this
period is excellent-she writes with ease about an extreme moment of Canada's history, and does a superb job of
introducing even non-Canadian readers to the complex social relationships and political alliances forged in the
internment camps. The entire book is exceedingly well-documented; her notes in this chapter, in particular, are
meticulous.
MacDowell has written a richly detailed history of Cohen's legal career. The book will be of interest to Canadian
legal scholars, labor historians in general, and those interested in making a comparison between similar moments
in the development of U. S. labor law. RENEGADE LAWYER will also prove valuable and enjoyable to fans of biography
in general. It will prove less useful to scholars interested in reading about legal strategies developed by unions
in Canada, or a social science account akin to legal resource mobilization. At times, MacDowell's treatment of
Cohen's involvement in case law reads more like a catalogue than a narrative, and she doesn't often bring doctrinal
analysis to her discussions of the law. It must be granted that Cohen, himself, viewed his role in labor law as
an advocate, not a strategist; he believed firmly that norms of industrial democracy mitigated against his leadership
in union decision-making. Since MacDowell's focus is on Cohen, and not the union movement in general, her lack
of attention to strategy on the part of the movement is understandable, if frustrating.
MacDowell's focus on Cohen, and her desire to see him as a full human being, not simply as a lawyer, leads to what
is one of the most interesting chapters in the book (Chapter 9: On Trial, 1946-1947) as well as what I perceive
to be its primary weakness. In 1945, in the course of a nearly decade-long dependency on alcohol and the barbiturate
Nembutal, which he used to self-medicate for extreme anxiety and several phobias, Cohen physically assaulted his
twenty-year old female assistant and sometime lover, Elizabeth Guenard, as the two traveled together to a labor
convention at Kirkland Lake, Ontario.
MacDowell does a brilliant job of leading her readers through the conflicting testimony that led to a finding of
Cohen's guilt. Although contending his probable guilt, she sheds light on, though cannot prove, allegations that
the criminal prosecution against him was politically motivated. Throughout this chapter, as well as her treatment
of Cohen's disbarment, eventual reinstatement to the bar, and apparent suicide, MacDowell makes judicious use of
primary sources, journalistic accounts, and oral histories-but never seems to gossip or muckrake. She handles
this delicate and contentious topic with dignity.
My quarrel with her treatment of the incident, and of Cohen's private life in general, is that I read it to be
nearly too apologetic of his actions, and a misapprehension of recent theory on the
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construction of masculinity and the dichotomization of the public and private roles of men. In the Introduction
to the book, MacDowell states that she hopes the biography, in a small way, will address recent literature on the
history and construction of masculinity (p. 6), which has found that, "[I]n the 1930s and 1940s society expected
men to fulfill the role of 'the good provider.'" She argues that Cohen "reflected the notions of manliness
current in the period. He worked very hard, made a good living, and supported his family from an early age"
(p. 6). It isn't odd that Cohen would separate his personal and working lives, but "in his case the division
was extreme Cohen built a wall around himself and was not the same person in his private personal life, which
was kept hidden, as he was in his public role." This is all sound, but MacDowell goes on to argue:
"Notions of masculinity may help us to understand Cohen's disbarment as a result of the Guenard incident and
his subsequent reinstatement. This excruciating and humiliating experience was triggered when, in a period of
fatigue and illness, he acted inappropriately and ruined his personal reputation ... his mistake could not be conveniently
buried" (p. 6).
MacDowell's continued reference to the assault on Guenard as a "mistake" that "humiliated"
Cohen seems to me to shift both harm and blame. Cohen becomes the harmed party, though he assaulted the woman;
and Cohen is able to shift blame from himself, even after being found guilty, as MacDowell herself points out,
not by denying his actions, but by refusing to accord them any significance (p. 274). Except for a few lines in
the Introduction, no details of Cohen's ongoing and extensive personal and medical history enter the narrative
in his biography, until the final 45 pages. MacDowell gives adequate justification for writing the narrative in
this way: the structure mirrors Cohen's outline for an unfinished autobiography. However, by allowing Cohen's
private life-which included numerous nervous breakdowns and
love affairs-to remain split, or bifurcated, from his public life in her chronicle of his career, MacDowell naturalizes
both societal gender norms from the day, and Cohen's own mental illness and addiction.
Rather than internalizing and appropriating the literature's critique of the dichotomization of public and private
in masculine lives of the period, MacDowell uses the idea of a constructed masculinity to show how Cohen's own
version of it-a womanizing good provider that is somehow extremely dependant on the women in his life for basic
sustenance (on Cohen's dependence on his wife, see especially pp. 231, 261)-is somehow natural, inevitable, and
beyond his responsibility. The very last line of the biography revisits the "drunken brawl" (p. 261)
and assault of Elizabeth Guenard, reframing it as a "misadventure" that "set in motion events that
culminated in his early death" (p. 300).
MacDowell states, in the Introduction, that she wrote Cohen's biography for two reasons. First, she wrote it as
response to a new "political climate and global economy" that is increasingly anti-labor (p. 5). Second,
she envisions the book to be a response to "many scholars from different perspectives who are re-examining
the state's role" in collective bargaining systems and social welfare provision (p. 5). The theoretical underpinnings
of the work are not revealed, however, until the Epilogue (pp. 291-300), where MacDowell provides an extended and
particularly useful
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discussion of a recent trend in Canadian political science that she terms "the theory of the post-war settlement"
(p. 294). This theory "minimize[s] the role of employees and depict[s] union leaders as 'agents of social
control,' and [is] critical of the human-resource-management approach taught in business schools and the increasingly
legalistic labour-relations environment" (pp. 294-95). Her goal in detailing Cohen's legal life is to dispute
the theory of the post-war settlement, and show the agency and vigor of the early Canadian labor movement.
Though I would not recommend the book for undergraduate classes in any field, or for graduate work in any but the
most specific contexts, there are four reasons in addition to MacDowell's stated goals, that RENEGADE LAWYER was
a worthwhile book to research and write, and an appropriate book for historians and political scientists to read.
First, certain aspects of the book illustrate the early presence of numerous transnational corporations-Campbell
Soup and General Electric, for example (p. 101)-and their anti-labor strategies, and provide a unique historical
perspective on recent debates and studies of globalization.
The book is particularly timely in the United States, for two reasons.Its topic and style are reminiscent of A
BEAUTIFUL MIND, Sylvia Nasar'sbiography of John Nash. Also, Canada's World War II internment anddetention policies
will remind current readers of ongoing debates about theUnited States' Patriot Act and student visas, as well as
the detention of Al Queda fighters on Guantanamo Bay.
Though she doesn't go into detail, MacDowell's treatment of Anti-Semitism in Canada during this period (especially
Chapter 1: The Making of a Lawyer) will also be of interest to scholars of Jewish history, and lends itself to
interesting discussions of the construction of "whiteness." The first chapter is particularly strong
in the passages where MacDowell explains that Jewish lawyers' specialization in particular areas of law-bankruptcy
and personal injury, for example-was an "unintended consequence of discrimination" (p. 23).
Finally, MacDowell's treatment of Cohen's life is incredibly valuable for unpublished secondary sources her research
brings to light. Her discussion, in particular, of Peter Bruce's MIT (1988) dissertation, and David Estok's (1981)
master's of journalism thesis interested me so greatly that I "googled" both of the writers in an effort
to find published accounts versions of their work.
MacDowell does an exemplary job of making Canadian labor history accessible to non-Canadian readers. Her list
of abbreviations, and the glossary of labor terms are lifesavers to readers unfamiliar with the topography. I
would recommend the addition of a map, for those of us literally topographically challenged.
RENEGADE LAWYER is an intelligent, compelling-and slightly flawed-biography of an intelligent, compelling, and
fatally flawed man. I would recommend it for scholars interested in Canadian or American labor law, and those
with a specific interest in the 1930s and 1940s in Canada.
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Copyright 2002 by the author, Renee Ann Cramer.