United States · Book or treatise

A Treatise on the Constitutional Limitations Which Rest upon the Legislative Power of the States of the American Union

The original 1868 edition examines constitutional limits on state legislative power. Scalia cites its arms discussion in Heller. Read the unchanged Michigan Law scan alongside newly generated OCR, or download a separately labeled searchable copy. Printed page 350 and the final index are preserved; the omitted leaf [634] is blank.

Original scan and searchable OCR copy available. Collection target: Original 1868 edition, including page 350 cited in Heller.

A Treatise on the Constitutional Limitations Which Rest upon the Legislative Power of the States of the American Union

Thomas M. Cooley · 1868

Thomas M. Cooley, A Treatise on the Constitutional Limitations Which Rest upon the Legislative Power of the States of the American Union (Boston, Little, Brown, & Co. 1868)

University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository; original 1868 scan and repository cover preserved. Printed content appears complete; blank leaf [634] is omitted. Completeness rests on sampled collation. The reader uses newly generated OCR, and a separate searchable download retains the original page images. Check the scan before quoting.

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Use in constitutional interpretation

Antonin Scalia · Majority

District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 616–17 (2008).

Cooley treats keeping and bearing arms as a defense of personal liberty and relates an armed people to a militia. He expressly declines to settle the extent of legislative regulation. The footnote cites Bliss, Nunn, and Ely.

Read printed 350 →

Cites the original 1868 edition in the University of Michigan Law School scan, a different source file from the incomplete Google scan.

Printed page 350 is PDF page 397. The absent leaf [634] is blank; the index continues through printed page 720. Other mapped page labels are inferred from sampled collation.

The original institutional PDF is unchanged. A separately identified OCR derivative adds machine-recognized text; its 2026 processing date is not the edition date.