James Kent - Further reading

Legal scholar, born in Southeast, New York, USA. A staunch Federalist, he was chosen by John Jay and Alexander Hamilton to be Columbia College's first professor of law (1793–8). In 1798 he was appointed to the New York State Supreme Court and rose to become its chief justice (1804–14). He became chancellor of the New York State court of chancery (1814–23) where his decisions and written opinions often implemented equity jurisdiction, dubbing him ‘the American Blackstone’. His compulsory retirement from the bench at age 60 led to his return to Columbia, where he wrote America's first legal classic, Commentaries on American Law (4 vols, 1826–30), which provided the first systematic, clear approach to Anglo-American law.

James Kent (July 31, 1763–December 12, 1847), American jurist and legal scholar, was born at New York. He graduated from Yale College in 1781, having helped establish the Phi Beta Kappa society there in 1780, and began to practise law at Poughkeepsie, New York in 1785 as an attorney, and in 1787 at the bar. In 1791 and 1792-93 Kent was a representative of Dutchess County in the New York State Assembly. In 1793 he removed to New York City, where Governor John Jay, to whom the young lawyer's Federalist sympathies were a strong recommendation, appointed him a master in chancery for the city. In 1797 he became recorder of New York, in 1798 judge of the Supreme Court of the State, in 1804 Chief Justice, and in 1814 chancellor of New York. The Commentaries treated both state, federal and international law, and the law of personal rights and of property, and went through six editions in Kent's lifetime.

Kent rendered his most essential service to American jurisprudence while serving as chancellor.

With his wife Elizabeth Bailey, Kent had four children: Elizabeth (died in infancy), Elizabeth, William and Mary.

Kent County, Michigan is named in his honor, probably because he represented Michigan Territory in its dispute with Ohio over the Toledo Strip. The Chancellor Kent Professorship at Columbia Law School is also named in his honor as is Kent Hall, which was built for the law school but which now contains Columbia's departments of East Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures along with its East Asian library.

Further reading

Duer, John, Discourse on the Life, Character, and Public Services of James Kent, New York, 1848.