Jurist

Humble Beginnings.

Although Thomas M. Cooley's jurisprudence became an important tool for the entrenchment of elite interests in the late nineteenth century, his own background was not privileged. The tenth of fifteen children born into a family that supported itself on a onehundred- acre farm near Rochester, New York, Cooley would come to feel disadvantaged by his lack of social opportunities and education. He was the only one of the Cooley children to advance beyond the local common schools and attend Attica Academy. Upon graduating in 1842 he began to study law in nearby Palmyra under the direction of Democratic congressman Theron Strong. The next year he moved to Michigan, where he was admitted to the bar in 1846. He soon associated himself with the Democratic faction charging that the party had come to be dominated by a small circle of insiders —headed in Michigan...