Édouard René de Laboulaye

Who was Édouard René de Laboulaye?

Édouard René Lefèbvre de Laboulaye was a French jurist, poet, author and anti-slavery activist. He is remembered as the intellectual creator of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, proposing the idea for a monument in 1865 paid by the citizens of France, and the lesser known Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, France.

Laboulaye was received at the bar in 1842, and was chosen professor of comparative law at the Collège de France in 1849. Following the Paris Commune of 1870, he was elected to the national assembly, representing the département of the Seine. As secretary of the committee of thirty on the constitution he was effective in combatting the Monarchists in establishing the Third Republic. In 1875 he was elected a life senator, and in 1876 he was appointed administrator of the Collège de France, resuming his lectures on comparative legislation in 1877. Laboulaye was also chairman of the French Anti-Slavery Society.

Always a careful observer of the politics of the United States, and an admirer of its constitution, he wrote a three-volume work on the political history of the United States, and published it in Paris during the height of the politically repressed Second Empire.