Background

He was born in Attica, N.Y., one of a family of fifteen children. After formal education at the Attica Academy, Cooley began law studies in a Palmyra, N.Y., law office. Determined to go to Chicago he started westward, but his funds proved insufficient. He stopped in Adrian, Mich., where he completely his law studies and was admitted to the bar in 1846. Cooley suffered hardships for nearly a decade, shifting from community to community in an effort to earn a living. But in 1857 he was chosen to compile the Michigan statutes, and upon completion of this task was appointed official reporter of the Michigan Supreme Court, a post he held until 1865. In 1864 Cooley was elected on the Republican ticket as a justice of the Supreme Court of Michigan, and held that office until 1885. As a justice his opinions were characterized by clear, vigorous statement of the law, with emphasis on the certainty which he felt to be a dominant element of all law.

In 1859, five years before his election to the bench, Cooley accepted appointment in the newly established law department of the University of Michigan, and remained a member of the law faculty for twenty-five years. His important scholarly writings on American law were published during this period of his life. In 1868 appeared his most significant work, A Treatise on the Constitutional Limitations Which Rest Upon the Legislative Power of the States of the American Union. Cooley's Constitutional Limitations, which went through seven editions, was unquestionably the most influential legal treatise in the half century following its publication. Its natural rights doctrines served as effective legal ammunition for those opposing social legislation adversely affecting property rights and the capacity of businessmen to run their affairs as they saw fit. Cooley's principal other works were his edition (1871) of William Blackstone's Commentaries, to which he contributed a substantial amount of U.S. legal material; his edition (1873) of Joseph Story's classic, Commentaries on the Constitution; and his Treatise on the Law of Torts (1879), the definitive work in that field for several decades.

Following his resignation from the law school, Cooley served briefly as a professor of history and constitutional law at the University of Michigan. In 1887 he resigned to accept appointment as the first chairman of the newly created federal Interstate Commerce Commission, on which he served for four years. In 1893 he was elected president of the American Bar Association. Cooley died in Ann Arbor, Mich., on Sept. 17, 1898.