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Thomas M. Cooley

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Thomas McIntyre Cooley
Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court
In office
1864–1885
Preceded byRandolph Manning
Succeeded byAllen B. Morse
2nd Dean of University of Michigan Law School
In office
1871–1883
Preceded byJames V. Campbell
Succeeded byCharles A. Kent
Personal details
Born(1824-01-06)January 6, 1824
Attica, New York, U.S.
DiedSeptember 12, 1898(1898-09-12) (aged 74)
Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.
Occupationprofessor, lawyer, jurist
Signature

Thomas McIntyre Cooley (January 6, 1824 – September 12, 1898) was an American jurist who served on the Michigan Supreme Court from 1964 to 1885, presiding as its Chief Justice for his final year. He also served as the first chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission.

Cooley was one of the first three faculty members of the University of Michigan Law School and served as its dean from 1871 to 1883. In 1972, Western Michigan University opened its Cooley Law School in his honor.

Early life and career

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Thomas McIntyre Cooley was born on January 6, 1824, in Attica, New York, to Thomas Cooley and Rachel Hubbard who had come from Massachusetts to take up farming.[1] He was the tenth of fifteen children in a family aligned with the Democratic Party.[2] While his father sought to have Cooley join the family farm, his mother encouraged him to continue studying Latin at Attica Academy. In 1842, he began studying law under Theron G. Strong in Palmyra, New York. After continuing to study with the firm Tiffany & Beman in Adrian, Michigan, Cooley passed the bar in 1846.[1]

From 1848 to 1854, Cooley partnered with Beman & Beecher in Adrian, concurrently serving as the circuit court's commissioner, village's recorder, and Adrian Watchtower newspaper's editor. In 1854, he briefly entered the real estate business in Toledo, Ohio, but after losing an election to become the city's district judge, he returned to Adrian to partner with future governor Charles Croswell.[1][3] In 1848, Cooley wrote poems criticizing slavery and co-founded the Michigan chapter of the Free Soil Party, and in 1856, he switched to the Republican Party based on its promotion of legal equality.[4][5]

In 1857, the Michigan Legislature appointed Cooley as compiler of its statutes. His success in that role led the Michigan Supreme Court to appoint him as its reporter of decisions. In 1859, the newly established University of Michigan Law School chose Cooley as one of its first three faculty members, and he continued teaching until 1884. Cooley designed the curriculum to follow Joseph Story's approach at Harvard Law School of lecture-based instruction.[1]

Academic works

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Cover of a modern edition of A Treatise on the Constitutional Limitations

When the University of Michigan Law School's first three professors divided the curriculum between themselves, Cooley was assigned to constitutional law. Summarizing his research, Cooley published A Treatise on the Constitutional Limitations Which Rest Upon the Legislative Power of the States of the American Union (often shortened to Constitutional Limitations) in 1868.[1] In this treatise, Cooley argued that while the Constitution of the United States delegated significant authority to state governments, George Washington and John Adams claimed greater federal authority in practice, while the Civil War further developed a national identity.[6] Using his reputation as a constitutional law scholar, Cooley later opposed the Newlands Resolution, which annexed Hawaii, as exceeding Congress' treaty-making authority.[1]

The title pages of Cooley's Treatise on the Law of Torts (1907)[7] and General Principles of Constitutional Law (1st ed., 1880)[8]

In 1870, Cooley published an edited edition of William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, followed by an updated edition of Story's Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States in 1874 that addressed the Reconstruction Amendments.[9] Returning to original works, Cooley published A Treatise on the Law of Taxation Including the Law of Local Assessments in 1876, A Treatise on the Law of Torts or the Wrongs Which Arise Independently of Contract in 1879, and The General Principles of Constitutional Law in the United States of America in 1880.[1] His torts treatise was written as an update to Francis Hilliard's 1859 The Law of Torts or Private Wrongs, the first American treatise on tort law, in response to increasing tort litigation over occupational injury.[10]

Aside from regularly writing in law reviews across the country, Cooley spoke before the American Bar Association and state bar associations of Georgia, New York, South Carolina, and Tennessee, producing widely published speeches. Aside from his legal writing, Cooley also published a book on the history of Michigan and an article on the Louisiana Purchase.[1]

Michigan Supreme Court

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Cooley served on the Michigan Supreme Court from January 1865 to October 1885, succeeding Randolph Manning.[9] James V. Campbell, Isaac P. Christiancy, Benjamin F. Graves, and Cooley have become known as the "Big Four" for the impact of their decisions on other states across all areas of law during their overlapping tenures.[11] Ironically, all four were born in New York.[12]

Cooley rejected the use of mandamus to force a governor into legal compliance, deeming the public's only remedy in persuading the legislature to pursue impeachment.[13] His "Cooley Doctrine" of an individual right to local government is in opposition to Dillon's Rule, which dictates that local governments only derive their authority from the state legislature.[1]

Espousing an early form of rational basis review, Cooley cautioned that laws should only be struck down where clearly unconstitutional.[6] James Bradley Thayer later cited Cooley in favor of this standard, which Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Louis Brandeis implemented in their United States Supreme Court's jurisprudence.[14] In People v. Salem (Mich. 1870), Cooley held that it was unconstitutional for the state to tax the public to fund a privately operated railroad even if the business could boost the regional economy.[1] In other cases, he similarly held that the state could not use eminent domain to transfer private property to private businesses.[15]

In 1869, Cooley ended racial segregation of Detroit schools on statutory grounds, only alluding to the likely unconstitutionality of such discrimination. In 1881, he dissented in a newspaper libel case, advocating the actual malice standard ultimately adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964) for claims brought by public figures.[13][14]

Cooley supported Michigan's practice of electing its judges, but he detested Thomas R. Sherwood for writing decisions that pandered to voters.[14] In 1872, he considered running as a Liberal Republican for a seat in the House of Representatives but ultimately decided against it. In 1874, he was considered for the Senate seat vacated by Zachariah Chandler, but Christiancy was selected instead.[13] In the 1884 United States elections, Cooley was a Mugwump who supported President Grover Cleveland, alienating his traditional base of Republican Party supporters. He further lost the support of both Detroit newspapers by opposing one's fight over the Regents of the University of Michigan and ruling against the other in a libel case.[14] While Cooley is often referred to as "resigning" his seat, he only did so as a lame duck after being voted out from the Michigan Supreme Court in favor of Allen B. Morse.[16] After losing his seat, Cooley was unable to secure either party's support to be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, as he was considered insufficiently committed to both.[14]

Later career

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Upon leaving the Michigan Supreme Court, Cooley expected to focus on his academic work, but Judge Walter Q. Gresham appointed him as receiver of the Wabash Railroad in December 1886. Cooley was seen as incorruptible, whereas his predecessors had acted on behalf of the railroad's owner, Jay Gould.[5][17] In March 1887, Cooley left that position upon his appointment as the inaugural chair of the Interstate Commerce Commission by President Cleveland, who saw Cooley as balanced between the interests of workers and railroads.[1][17] Following the Burlington railroad strike of 1888, Cooley forced each side to submit a written account of the events to dissuade both sides from further violence.[5] His 1891 recommendation for a worker's compensation program in the rail sector was adopted in the Federal Employers Liability Acts of 1906 and 1908.[17]

Cooley openly criticized the U.S. Supreme Court's holding in Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Co. v. Minnesota (1890) that the rate-making decisions of state agencies would be reviewed de novo by federal courts as a question of law, rather than be afforded judicial deference. Those criticisms prompted the 1906 Hepburn Act to expand the commission's jurisdiction and make its findings binding on jury determinations.[5][17] In 1893, Cooley was elected as the 16th President of the American Bar Association.[14]

Personal life

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Cooley grave in front of Cooley family obelisk

In December 1846, Cooley married Mary Elizabeth Horton. Together, they had four sons, including sociologist Charles Horton Cooley and pediatrician Thomas Benton Cooley, and two daughters.[1] After the onset of his epilepsy in 1889 and death of his wife in 1890, Cooley began reducing his workload.[17] On September 12, 1898, he died in his home in Ann Arbor, Michigan.[1]

Legacy

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During Christopher Columbus Langdell's tenure as dean of Harvard Law School from 1870 to 1895, Langdell instituted the case method for teaching the law of contracts, property, torts, civil procedure, and criminal law. The constitutional law that Cooley had specialized in was excluded from the first-year curriculum because it could not be simplified into doctrine. While Harvard Law awarded Cooley an honorary doctorate during the university's 250th anniversary celebrations in November 1886, the school's rising reputation under Langdell left Cooley's work increasingly obscure.[14]

Cooley's decisions have been further maligned as formalist, in comparison to the legal realism embraced by Holmes and Benjamin N. Cardozo during their tenures on state supreme courts and the U.S. Supreme Court. After his death, Cooley's Constitutional Limitations was cited in the U.S. Supreme Court's 1905 decision in Lochner v. New York, leaving him associated with the Lochner era of courts using substantive due process to invalidate legislation held to infringe on economic liberties.[13][11] However, political scientist Joseph Postell has rebutted that Cooley affirmed the government's regulatory power through his leadership of the Interstate Commerce Commission.[18]

In 1972, Western Michigan University opened its Cooley Law School in Cooley's honor.[19] In 1986, the State Bar of Michigan recognized his first law office on Maumee Street in Adrian, Michigan, as the state's third legal milestone.[20] Cooley High School in Detroit and Cooley Elementary School in Waterford, Michigan, are named in Cooley's honor.[21]

English Wikisource has original text related to this article:

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Knowlton, Jerome C. (1907). "Thomas McIntyre Cooley". Michigan Law Review. 5 (5): 309–325.
  2. ^ Jones, Alan (1967). "Thomas M. Cooley and "Laissez-Faire Constitutionalism": A Reconsideration". The Journal of American History. 53 (4): 751–771. doi:10.2307/1893990. ISSN 0021-8723.
  3. ^ Herstein, Carl W. (May 2016). "Michigan Lawyers in History: Thomas McIntyre Cooley" (PDF). Michigan Bar Journal: 34–36.
  4. ^ Paludan, Phillip S. (1972). "Law and the Failure of Reconstruction: The Case of Thomas Cooley". Journal of the History of Ideas. 33 (4): 597–614. doi:10.2307/2708859. ISSN 0022-5037.
  5. ^ a b c d Jones, Alan (1966). "Thomas M. Cooley and the Interstate Commerce Commission: Continuity and Change in the Doctrine of Equal Rights". Political Science Quarterly. 81 (4): 602–627. doi:10.2307/2146908. ISSN 0032-3195.
  6. ^ a b Weeks, O. Douglas (1925). "Some Political Ideas of Thomas McIntyre Cooley". The Southwestern Political and Social Science Quarterly. 6 (1): 30–39. ISSN 2374-1309.
  7. ^ Thomas M. Cooley (1907), A Treatise on the Law of Torts or the Wrongs which Arise Independently of Contract (Students' ed.), Chicago, Ill.: Callaghan & Co., OCLC 1595776.
  8. ^ Thomas M. Cooley (1880), The General Principles of Constitutional Law in the United States of America (1st ed.), Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, OCLC 14448549.
  9. ^ a b "Mr. Justice Cooley". American Law Review. 32 (6): 916–920. 1898.
  10. ^ Witt, John Fabian (2004). The Accidental Republic: Crippled Workingmen, Destitute Widows, and the Remaking of American Law. Harvard University Press. pp. 51–52. ISBN 978-0674022614.
  11. ^ a b Herstein, Carl W. (2013). "Postmodern Conservatism: The Intellectual Origins of the Engler Court (Part I)" (PDF). Wayne Law Review. 59: 781–873.
  12. ^ Bean, Barbara H.; Roumell Jr., George T. (June 2012). "The Big Four: Imported From Michigan" (PDF). Michigan Bar Journal: 33–36.
  13. ^ a b c d Jones, Alan (April 1996). "Thomas M. Cooley and the Michigan Supreme Court: 1865-1885". The American Journal of Legal History. 10 (2): 97. doi:10.2307/844482.
  14. ^ a b c d e f g Carrington, Paul D. (February 1997). "Law as "The Common Thoughts of Men": The Law-Teaching and Judging of Thomas McIntyre Cooley". Stanford Law Review. 49: 495–546.
  15. ^ Ely Jr., James W. (Winter 2004). "Thomas Cooley, Public Use, and New Directions in Takings Jurisprudence". Michigan State Law Review. 2004 (4): 845–858.
  16. ^ Edwards, George (1987). "Why Justice Cooley Left the Bench: A Missing Page of Legal History". Wayne Law Review. 33: 1563–1572.
  17. ^ a b c d e Carrington, Paul D. (1998). "Law and Economics in the Creation of Federal Administrative Law: Thomas Cooley, Elder to the Republic". Iowa Law Review. 83: 363–390.
  18. ^ Postell, Joseph (2020). "The Misunderstood Thomas Cooley: Regulation and Natural Rights from the Founding to the ICC" (PDF). Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy. 18: 75–103.
  19. ^ "The Law School's Mission & History". Cooley Law School. Retrieved November 27, 2025.
  20. ^ "Michigan Legal Milestones: 3. Cooley Law Office". State Bar of Michigan. 1986. Retrieved November 27, 2025.
  21. ^ King, R.J. (May 14, 2025). "Long-Abandoned Cooley High School on Detroit's Northwest Side to Be Redeveloped". DBusiness. Retrieved November 27, 2025.

Sources

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