Lucy Cohen; Helped Write Law Treatise

Lucy Kramer Cohen, 99, who helped draft and revise her husband's seminal Handbook of Federal Indian Law and who worked for decades for the federal government, sometimes without pay, died Jan. 2 at her home in Washington after a stroke.

Mrs. Cohen came to Washington in 1933 and joined the Interior Department, as did her husband, Felix S. Cohen, a lawyer. Because a federal rule prohibited two family members from both earning paychecks during the Depression, she was often uncompensated for her work.

Trained as an anthropologist, Mrs. Cohen helped her husband with the drafting of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. She drew up questionnaires for tribes on their education and housing needs, then tabulated the results.

The couple's next task was the herculean job of compiling and organizing a century and a half of treaties, statutes, judicial opinions and administrative rulings on Indian law, which were published in six volumes in 1942 as the Handbook of Federal Indian Law, under her husband's name. In 1948, he was awarded the Interior Department's highest honor, the Distinguished Service Award, and remained a strong advocate for Indian rights throughout his life.

"When Felix was detailed to Justice, Lucy helped draft the original edition of the Handbook, writing the chapters on treaties and on government services to Indians," Nell Newton, now dean of the University of California's Hastings College of Law, said in 2005, when a revised edition of the handbook was dedicated to Mrs. Cohen for her substantial contribution.

"I incorporated some of the chapter on treaties in the 2005 edition and marveled -- as I always do -- at the economy and elegance of writing," Newton added. "She proofread the whole thing as well: Her stories of feeding [her daughter] while proofreading mimeograph stencils are family legends."

Mrs. Cohen, a Brooklyn native who graduated from Barnard College, earned her master's degree in 1929 in mathematics and anthropology at Columbia University under the noted anthropologist Franz Boas. Among the other anthropology graduate students who studied with her was Margaret Mead.

She continued to study physical anthropology and math in New York and Washington and did research work for anthropologists in Washington between her government jobs. She worked from a cubbyhole at the Library of Congress, researching and writing for Interior Secretary Harold Ickes.

One of her later positions was on the staff of Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas (D-Calif.) during her three terms in the House before Douglas was defeated by then-Rep. Richard M. Nixon (R-Calif.) in 1950 for a Senate seat.

Mrs. Cohen also worked for the War Labor Board, the Office of Price Administration, the State Department and the Public Health Service, where she wrote and edited reports in its office of data analysis and management.

She also collected, edited and published her husband's works as "The Legal Conscience" (1960) after his death in 1953. It was favorably reviewed in the New York Times by Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.

Forced to retire under mandatory government rules in 1977, Mrs. Cohen was considered indispensable and was retained on annual contracts until her actual retirement in 1989 at 82.

In her later years, she developed her artistic talent. One of her pen-and-ink drawings hung in a juried show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She was elected to the Arts Club of Washington and served as editor of the Washington Watercolor Association newsletter.

A woman of great spirit and vivacity, she liked to tell people that she was four feet, 10 3/4 inches tall, with an emphasis on the last fraction. She took her first trip to Europe in her late 50s, went to Alaska in her 80s and adored meeting new people, her family said.

Survivors include two daughters, Gene Twerase of Fayetteville, Ark., and Karen Cohen Holmes of Schenectady, N.Y.; four grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.