The Bankrupt Law of America, Compared with the Bankrupt Law...
An Important Early American Treatise on Bankrupt Law Written During the Author's Imprisonment Cooper, Thomas [1759-1839]. The Bankrupt Law of America, Compared with the Bankrupt Law of England. Philadelphia: Printed by John Thompson, 1801. xix, [1], 399, [1], xciv, [2], xxxii, 10 pp. Octavo (8" x 5"; 20.3 x 12.5 cm). Modern cloth, gilt fillets, title and date to spine, endpapers renewed. Browning (somewhat significant in places) and light foxing to interior, ink underlining to a few pages in final appendix. A notably scarce title in commerce. $1,000. * First edition. Cooper's landmark work was specifically engineered to assist American lawyers navigating the complex terrain of the first Federal Bankruptcy Act, which had been enacted by Congress in February 1800. Designed to encourage bold economic risk-taking and to supersede the chaotic, predatory patchwork of state-level debtor laws, the Act was closely modeled on the bankruptcy frameworks of Great Britain, the world's leading commercial superpower. Cooper's rigorous legal mind shines in the extensive appendices, where he expands his scope to draw sharp, comparative analyses with the contemporary bankruptcy codes of France and Spain. Beyond its technical legal merits, the book stands as an extraordinary artifact of early American political warfare. Cooper-a chemist, lawyer, and brilliant polymath-was a close confidant of both Joseph Priestley and Thomas Jefferson. He would go on to serve as a professor of chemistry at Dickinson College and the University of Pennsylvania, and later as the president of South Carolina College. However, in 1800, his fiery democratic principles landed him in a federal prison. Convicted under the notorious Sedition Act for libeling President John Adams in a 1799 political handbill, Cooper researched and wrote this entire monumental treatise while serving his six-month sentence. He leaned directly into his martyrdom in the preface, famously writing that it was an honor to be punished for: "...exposing some few among the errors of a weak, a wicked and a vindictive administration" (v). A foundational text of early American jurisprudence and a vivid monument to the struggle for free speech in the Early Republic. Cohen, Bibliography of Early American Law 2477.
Price: $1,000.00
Book number 83157