Thomas McIntyre Cooley

COOLEY, THOMAS McINTYRE

As a jurist, scholar, and educator in the late nineteenth
century, Thomas McIntyre Cooley greatly
influenced the development of U.S. CONSTITUTIONAL
LAW. In particular, Cooley’s writings
shaped later interpretation of the DUE PROCESS
CLAUSES of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments
to the Constitution. His ideas were used,
and sometimes misused, by others to help define
a laissez-faire approach to constitutional law
that sought to minimize the power of government
over private and commercial life. (Laissez-faire is French for “let [people] do [as they
choose].”) Cooley’s most important books
include A Treatise on the Constitutional Limitations
Which Rest upon the Legislative Power of the
States of the American Union (1868) and A Treatise
on the Law of Torts (1879, 3d ed. 1906), both
of which became the leading texts in their
respective fields. In his writings, Cooley consistently
defended constitutional government and
its ability to protect the rights of individuals
from ARBITRARY actions by the state.
Cooley had a distinguished career on the
Michigan Supreme Court between 1864 and
1885. From the 1870s onward, he was considered
a leading candidate for a seat on the U.S.
Supreme Court; however, he never received a
nomination. Cooley was also a founding member
of the University of Michigan’s law department
in 1859, remaining there as a professor
until 1884. As an indication of the complexity of
Cooley’s brand of conservatism, he served as the
first chairman of the INTERSTATE COMMERCE
COMMISSION (ICC), the body that regulates
interstate transportation. He was instrumental
in the establishment of the ICC as the federal
government’s first regulatory commission.
A descendant of seventeenth-century New
England settlers, Cooley was born January 6,
1824, on a farm near Attica, New York, the
eighth of his mother’s thirteen children. He had
a very basic education in local schools and did
not attend college. In 1842, he began studying
law under Theron R. Strong, a politician and
lawyer from Palmyra,New York.After moving to
Adrian,Michigan, to explore life on the frontier,
Cooley earned ADMISSION TO THE BAR in 1846.
In that same year, he married Mary Horton.
Cooley’s frontier experiences in Michigan had a
profound effect on him and shaped much of his
later thought.He learned the benefits of frugality
and self-reliance, and he took great pride in being
one of the state’s pioneers. He later wrote of the
way in which Michigan had been transformed
before his very eyes: “It was a state almost lost in
its woods . . . but the magic touch of industry
plied by vigorous hands speedily transformed the
scene; the woods opened to the building of many
beautiful and prosperous towns.”
Cooley was influenced in his youth by the
history and traditions of his New England forebears,
as well as the values of Jacksonian Democracy,
so named for ANDREW JACKSON, president
of the United States from 1829 to 1837. The
Jacksonians lay claim to the legacy of THOMAS JEFFERSON, and, like Jefferson, they had a bias in
favor of an agrarian society rather than a commercial
one. The Jacksonians were, therefore,
suspicious of big government and big business,
and saw both as a potential danger to the common
individual. Cooley’s constitutional philosophy
grew out of the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian
ideals of self-reliance, free trade, equal rights,
limited government, and maximum personal
liberties such as FREEDOM OF SPEECH.
During the 1840s and 1850s, Cooley was a
member of the radical wing of the DEMOCRATIC
PARTY. He was, for example, a Free-Soiler,
believing that territories and new states should
remain free of SLAVERY. In 1854, he accepted the
Democratic nomination to run for district judge
of COMMON PLEAS in Toledo, but he lost the
election. His views on slavery led him to join the
REPUBLICAN PARTY shortly after its inception in
1854, and he remained a member of it for the
rest of his life.
After a difficult decade spent moving about
and trying to get his legal career underway, in
1855, Cooley formed a law partnership in
Adrian with Charles M. Croswell, who later
became governor of Michigan. Two years later,
the state legislature chose Cooley to compile the
state statutes. He performed this task so ably
that in 1858 he was appointed the official
reporter of the state’s supreme court, an office
he held through 1865 and in which he edited
volumes 5 through 12 of Michigan Reports. Cooley
became one of the three founding professors
of the law department at the University of
Michigan in 1859, and later he served as its dean.
In 1884, he gave up his position with the law
department to serve as professor of U.S. history
and constitutional law in the literary department,
a position he held until his death on September
12, 1898.
Largely because of his excellent work editing
the Michigan Supreme Court’s reports, Cooley
was elected to the Michigan Supreme Court in
1864. Not long afterward, he began to prepare a
book based on his lectures on constitutional law.
A Treatise on Constitutional Limitations made
Cooley a nationally recognized authority on the
Constitution.

FURTHER READINGS
Carrington, Paul D. 1997. “The Constitutional Law Scholarship
of Thomas McIntyre Cooley.” American Journal of
Legal History 41 (July): 368–99.
Cooley, Thomas M. 1868. A Treatise on the Constitutional
Limitations Which Rest Upon the Legislative Power of the
States of the American Union. Boston: Little, Brown.
Fleener, William J., Jr. 2000. “Thomas McIntyre Cooley:
Michigan’s Most Influential Lawyer.” Michigan Bar
Journal 79 (February): 208.
Jacobs, Clyde E. 2001. Law Writers and the Courts: The Influence
of Thomas M. Cooley, Christopher G. Tiedeman, and
John F. Dillon upon American Constitutional Law.
Union, N.J.: Lawbook Exchange.
Jones, Alan R. 1960. The Constitutional Conservatism of
Thomas McIntyre Cooley: A Study in the History of Ideas.
Ph.D. Thesis. Reprint, New York: Garland, 1987.