[2] Cooper received a recess appointment from President John F. Kennedy on October 5, 1961, to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, to a new seat authorized by 75 Stat.

During the hearings, Cooper was described by witnesses, according to Time magazine, as "a temperamental tyrant who threw tantrums on the bench like a baby in a high chair."

During his testimony at the hearing, Cooper refused to sit down, remaining standing for nearly three hours.

[2] In 1970, Cooper presided over a claim that organized baseball exerted a monopolistic hold on all major and minor league teams, and in 1982, a complaint filed by Jacqueline Onassis that a photographer was harassing her and her daughter, Caroline Kennedy.

[4] During his service as chief justice of the New York Court of Special Sessions, Cooper wrote yearly reports on the problems regarding the treatment of young offenders in the criminal justice system, asserting "It is not impossible for a sentence to be a greater injustice than the criminal act: equivalent to putting a child with a common cold into a smallpox ward for treatment.