Édouard René de Laboulaye

Édouard René Lefèbvre de Laboulaye (1811 to 1883) was a French jurist, poet, author and anti-slavery activist who admired the political life of the United States and the American constitution. He was received at the bar in 1842 and chosen professor of comparative law at the Collège de France in 1849. After the Paris Commune of 1870 he sat in the national assembly for the Seine, helped defeat the monarchists in framing the constitution of the Third Republic, and in 1875 was elected a life senator. He wrote a three-volume political history of the United States, chaired the French Anti-Slavery Society and, in 1865, proposed that the French people present a statue of liberty to the United States, an idea that became the Statue of Liberty.