The dean of the University of Michigan Law School was Thomas Cooley, who died SEPTEMBER 12, 1898.
Thomas
Cooley was Chief Justice of Michigan's Supreme Court, President of the
American Bar Association and the first Chairman of the Interstate
Commerce Commission
His commentaries were influential in shaping American law.
He
declined offers to teach at Hastings College of Law, University of
Texas, Johns Hopkins University, Boston Law School, University of
Pennsylvania and Cornell Law School.
In Constitutional Limitations, Eighth Edition, Volume Two, p. 966, 974, Thomas Cooley stated:
"While
thus careful to establish, protect, and defend religious freedom and
equality, the American constitutions contain no provisions which
prohibit the authorities from such solemn recognition of a
superintending Providence in public transactions and exercises as the
general religious sentiment of mankind inspires, and as seems meet and
proper in finite and dependent beings."
Cooley continued:
"Whatever
may be the shades of religious belief, all must acknowledge the fitness
of recognizing in important human affairs the superintending care and
control of the great Governor of the Universe, and of acknowledging with
thanksgiving His boundless favors, of bowing in contrition when visited
with the penalties of His broken laws."
In his General Principles of Constitutional Law, 1890, Thomas Cooley wrote:
"It
was never intended by the Constitution that the government should be
prohibited from recognizing religion, or that religious worship should
never be provided for in cases where a proper recognition of Divine
Providence in the working of government might seem to require it, and
where it might be done without drawing an invidious distinction between
religious beliefs, organizations, or sects."
Thomas Cooley continued:
"The
Christian religion was always recognized in the administration of the
common law of the land, the fundamental principles of that religion must
continue to be recognized in the same cases and to the same extent as
formerly."
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