American judge and legal scholar Thomas McIntyre Cooley (1824-1898) served as a State Supreme Court Justice in Michigan and led the court to a national reputation with a distinguished record. In addition, his book, A Treatise on the Constitutional Limitations Which Rest Upon the Legislative Power of the States of the American Union, written in 1868, became the most widely-read and important work of its day on constitutional law.

Early Life

Thomas McIntyre Cooley was born on January 6, 1824, on a small farm in Attica, New York, in a rural part of western New York state. The son of Thomas and Rachel Cooley, he was part of a large, Protestant family. His father had come from Massachusetts to western New York 20 years earlier, and the Cooleys were a farming family.

Although the family was poor, learning was important to young Cooley. As a child he loved history and literature. He...