ABSTRACT
Born in New York, Thomas McIntyre Cooley at age eighteen moved to Michigan, where he became one of the most influential scholars and jurists of the nineteenth century. During his time on the bench, Cooley also served as professor and the first dean of the University of Michigan's Law Department, which was the forerunner of the University of Michigan Law School. Although Cooley was a prolific writer who published several leading works on torts and tax laws and who edited the writings of William Blackstone and Joseph Story, his greatest influence on US constitutional theory rests upon his treatise in the field. Cooley believed strongly in a self-regulating market, and his ideas mixed common law traditions of due process with the Jacksonian libertarian ideal of equal rights without class legislation. Cooley helped to establish an administrative rule-making process at the Interstate Commerce Commission, and he articulated a concept of administrative due process to protect parties with complaints before the agency.
