FEBRUARY 17 • 2022 | 15

she said something racially dis-
paraging about a visitor to the 
office.
In the aftermath of the 1967 
Detroit riot, which coincidentally 
began on the young lawyer’s 43rd 
birthday, he represented defen-
dants accused of looting free of 
charge. Detroit Mayor Coleman 
Young appointed him to the 
Detroit Police Commission, and 
he strongly backed the mayor’s 
efforts to integrate the force.
Avern Cohn’s father, Irwin, 
(1896-1984) was extremely suc-
cessful in law and real estate, and 
was also a generous man. “I don’t 
think anyone with a worthy cause 
ever asked my father for money 
and came away empty-handed,
” 
Cohn once told me. But much 
the same could be said of Irwin’s 
only son. 
“Not enough has been said 
about Avern’s philanthropy,
” said 
Mary Ellen Gurewitz, a prom-
inent labor and election law 
attorney. “I have no idea of the 
complete breadth of it.
”
Perhaps no one did. But 
besides the many Jewish orga-
nizations he helped, Cohn was 
a generous contributor to the 
Detroit Symphony Orchestra 
and the Detroit Chamber Music 
Society, and was instrumental 
in the founding — and funding 
— of Michigan’s chapter of the 

American Civil Liberties Union.
Even as a busy federal judge, 
he found time to be president 
of the Jewish Federation of 
Metropolitan Detroit in 1982-83 
and helped raise funds for a vari-
ety of causes.

THE FEDERAL BENCH
His professional dream was 
finally fulfilled in 1979, when 
five new federal judgeships were 
created for the Eastern District 
of Michigan, and then-U.S. Sen. 
Don Riegle recommended to 
President Jimmy Carter that one 
of his appointees be Avern Cohn.
He was easily confirmed by the 
Senate and was sworn in on Sept. 
26, 1979. “I had no idea how to 
be a judge,
” he told me years later. 
“But John Feikens (1917-2011) 
took me under his wing and 
helped me. He was my model of 
what a judge should be.
”
Yet as David Ashenfelter, a 
Pulitzer-Prize winning report-
er who is now an information 
officer for the federal courts, 
observed, “he worked hard and 
eventually got the hang of it, 
earning the respect of lawyers 
and prosecutors.
” 
Avern Cohn took all his cases 
by luck of the draw; he believed 
“that any judge who wants a 
case shouldn’t have it.
” But over 

Lois and Avern Cohn, c. 2000

continued on page 16

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