James Kent was born near Albany on July 31, 1763, the son of Moss Kent, Surrogate of Renesselaer County.^[4] Like his father^[5] and grandfather,^[6] Kent studied at Yale College, graduating in 1781. As he explained, "I stood as well as any in my class, but the test of scholarship at that day was contemptible. I was only a very inferior classical scholar, & we were not required, & to this day I have never looked into a Greek book but the New Testament."^[7] Kent was actually among the earliest members of Yale's Phi Beta Kappa chapter,^[8] no mean achievement in a class that included several future members of Congress, two United States senators, a minister to Europe, chief justices of Vermont and Connecticut, and three governors of Connecticut.^[9]

Kent traced his interest in law to his independent study of the fourth volume of Blackstone's Commentaries, which he read during periods when Yale classes were suspended due to the Revolutionary War.^[10] He devoted himself to mastering that learned treatise before hostilities in the area subsided and classes resumed.^[11]

There were no professional law schools at the time,^[12] so would-be law students had to "seek out some lawyer of more or less distinction, pay him a fee of perhaps two hundred dollars, and sit patiently at his feet to pick up such scraps of information as the great man in his moments of indulgence might casually let fall."^[13] Fortunately for Kent, his father introduced him to Egbert Benson, with whom he took up the study of law in 1781.^[14] Benson, New York's first Attorney General and later a Puisne (Associate) Justice of the New York Supreme Court,^[15] was at that time an acknowledged leader of the bar with many apprentices.^[16] Under Benson's tutelage, Kent blossomed. After admission to the bar in 1785, he began a law practice in Poughkeepsie with Gilbert Livingston.

Kent's practice—centered on debt cases—did not long hold his interest.^[17] He plainly preferred jurisprudence to jousting.^[18] In 1790, he left his practice to join the state legislature. Kent's position as Dutchess County representative allowed him to travel to New York City, where he was well received by such notable figures as Governor Clinton, Chancellor Livingston, and then-United States Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay.^[19] He was even lobbied, unsuccessfully, by Attorney General Aaron Burr,^[20] who sought election to the United States Senate and needed the support of New York legislators.^[21] After his own re-election to the New York Assembly as a Federalist in 1792, Kent lent his support to Jay's unsuccessful effort to unseat Governor Clinton in a controversial election. ^[22]

Following his own failure to win a seat in the fledgling House of Representatives, Kent moved to New York City, where he was appointed Professor of Law at Columbia College, an undergraduate liberal arts college.^[23] Kent had come highly recommended by Jay and others.^[24] Speaking of his own law lectures, Kent noted:

I read a course in 1794 & 5 to about 40 gentlemen of the first rank in the City. They were very well received, but I have long since discovered them to have been slight & trashy productions. I wanted Judicial labors to teach me precision. I dropped the course after one term . . . .^[25]

Kent's disparaging description of his own lectures belies their significance, as his introductory lecture on November 17, 1794 indicates:

This power in the judicial, of determining the constitutionality of laws, is necessary to preserve the equilibrium of the government, and prevent usurpations of one part upon another; and of all the parts of government, the legislative body is by far the most impetuous and powerful . . . . But the judicial power is the weakest of all, and as it is equally necessary to be preserved entire, it ought not in sound theory to be left naked without any constitutional means of defence.^[26]

Kent's attempts to teach law at Columbia ultimately proved frustrating and unsuccessful, as they did for his contemporaries at other schools.^[28] Perhaps the lectures were too complex for a liberal arts student, or perhaps the world was not yet ready for formal legal education at an undergraduate level. Only two students attended Kent's lectures during the second year and none enrolled in the third year.^[29] In 1797, the Trustees would not accept Kent's resignation; instead they conferred a Doctorate of Laws on him. ^[30] It was only in 1798, when then-Governor Jay appointed Kent to the Supreme Court,^[31] that Columbia College permitted its first professor of law to leave.^[32]

Footnote 5: See Macgrane Coxe, Chancellor Kent at Yale (pt. 1), 17 Yale L.J. 311, 311 (1908). For an account of a number of letters exchanged between James Kent and his father while the former was at Yale, see id. at 322-25. For a range of Kent's correspondence in his later years, see Carson, supra note 1, at 663-70.

Footnote 6: See John Theodore Horton, James Kent: A Study in Conservatism 1763- 1847, at 7 (1969).

Footnote 7: Letter from James Kent to Thomas Washington, Esq. (Oct. 6, 1828), in James Kent, An American Law Student of a Hundred Years Ago, 2 Am. L. Sch. Rev. 547, 548 (1911).

Footnote 8: See John B. Cassoday, James Kent and Joseph Story, 12 Yale L.J. 146, 146 (1903).

Footnote 9: See Horton, supra note 6, at 320; see also Coxe, supra note 5, at 334-35 (listing Kent's classmates and their accomplishments).

Footnote 10: See Kent, supra note 7, at 548. Yale was so disrupted, according to Kent, that it was "not open and in regular exercise more than half the usual time" during his years there. See James Kent, An Address Delivered at New Haven Before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, September 13, 1831, at 41 (New Haven, Hezekiah Howe 1831) [hereinafter Phi Beta Kappa Address]. Kent, in fact, witnessed the British troops in the act of landing on the shores of West Haven on the morning of July 5, 1779. See id. at 40 n*

Footnote 11: See Horton, supra note 6, at 21-22; Kent, supra note 7, at 548. Kent's interest may also have been stimulated by the 1781 graduation address given by President Stiles of Yale, who suggested that students should make a study of the law from Roman law to the present and prophesizing that if they did, "'There shall arise from our midst a great juristic genius.... With an acumen worthy of Trebonian, with the strength and keenness of the highest talent, with the authority of a vast erudition, he shall give form and system to our laws." ' Horton, supra note 6, at 29-30 (quoting Ezra Stiles, President of Yale).

Footnote 12: See Horton, supra note 6, at 32.

Footnote 13: Id. Of the few legal texts in the colonies, most were taken by lawyers, the vast majority of whom were Tories, as they fled the new post- revolutionary American government. See id. at 32-33.

Footnote 14: See Coxe, supra note 5, at 329-30.

Footnote 15: See 1 The Legal and Judicial History of New York, supra note 4, at 371. Benson was a New York Supreme Court Justice in 1798 when two of his former students, Kent and Jacob Radcliffe, were appointed to join him. See Horton, supra note 6, at 112; 1 The Legal and Judicial History of New York, supra note 4, at 371. Kent had an equivalent pleasure some years later, when two of his former pupils—William W. Van Ness and Smith Thompson—joined him as members of his court. See Horton, supra note 6, at 150.

Footnote 16: See 1 The Legal and Judicial History of New York, supra note 4, at 332-33.

Footnote 17: While Kent's practice allowed him to support himself, it was otherwise unexciting. See Horton, supra note 6, at 52. Among the collection of Kent's papers archived at the New York State Library, there is this gem: a letter from Kent to a Citzen Genet concerning his representation of Genet in a suit filed by one Cornelius Read for the loss of a vessel due to clumsiness of the skipper. Kent's advice was as follows:

I conclude his claim can be supported in law. I have thought it however due to your character to give you previous information of Mr. Read's Intention as you may possibly have no objection to accommodate with Mr. Read on terms satisfactory to you both, or else to leave the claim to the immediate decision of two or three indifferent men to be chosen mutually between you.

Letter from James Kent to Citzen Genet (July 7, 1795) (on file with the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections, Accession No. 20231).

Footnote 18: See John F. Dillon, Chancellor Kent: Concerning Erection of A Monument to His Memory, 3 Colum. L. Rev. 257, 259 (1903). "[Kent] was not fond of the contentions of the Bar, but he never wearied in the study and contemplation of the writings and labors of lawyers and judges of different countries, ancient or modern." Id. Indeed, he relished the opportunity to set aside his practice in 1796 when he was appointed a Master in Chancery. See Carson, supra note 1, at 664. That position involved responsibilities similar to that of a special referee, as is revealed by a Master's Report prepared by Kent in a case where Alexander Hamilton and Robert Morris were defendants, and Kent fixed the amount of principal and interest due on a bond. See id. Kent commented:

"[Being a Master in Chancery] promised me a more steady supply of pecuniary aid (of which I stood in need) and it enabled me in a degree to relinquish the practice of an Attorney, which I always extremely hated. My diffidence, or perhaps pride, was the principal cause of this disgust, since I found that I had not the requisite talents for a popular and shining advocate at the Bar."

Id. (quoting James Kent)

The public's lack of respect for lawyers—hardly unfamiliar to us today—may also have been a factor in Kent's career change. See Horton, supra note 6, at 37-38. Indeed, one satirist contemporary of Kent's drew up a mock code of behavior for young advocates "advising them to discard all modesty, and, assuming impudence, thrust themselves forward in the courts, brow-beat witnesses, insult their adversaries at bar, and take a lofty tone to the bench itself." Id. at 40.

Footnote 19: Jay and Kent crossed paths many times, with Jay playing a significant role in Kent becoming a professor at Columbia and then an Associate Justice of the State Supreme Court. Jay was the first Chief Justice of the New York State Supreme Court from 1777 to 1779. See 1 The Legal and Judicial History of New York, supra note 4, at 371. After serving the United States as Minister to Spain and Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Jay was named the first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court in 1790 by George Washington. See G. Edward White, The American Judicial Tradition 8 (expanded ed. 1988). After an unsuccessful attempt in 1792, Jay was elected Governor of New York in 1795 and resigned as Chief Justice. See 1 Charles Z. Lincoln, The Constitutional History of New York 599-600 (1906).

Footnote 20: See Carson, supra note 1, at 664. Kent grew to hate Burr; indeed, encountering Burr on Nassau Street some years later, Kent shook his cane in Burr's face and blurted out, "'You are a scoundrel sir!—a scoundrel!" ' Cassoday, supra note 8, at 152 (quoting James Kent). Burr allegedly bowed, raised his hat, and replied that "'[t]he opinions of the learned Chancellor [of New York] are always entitled to the highest consideration." ' Id. (quoting Aaron Burr).

Footnote 21: See Horton, supra note 6, at 62.

Footnote 22: See 1 The Legal and Judicial History of New York, supra note 4, at 333. For greater detail on the controversy surrounding the election and Kent's unsuccessful attempts to right matters, see Horton, supra note 6, at 68-73.

Footnote 23: See Carson, supra note 1, at 663. Columbia's Law School was originally housed in a building named for Kent. Indeed, Kent Hall still stands on 116th Street off Amsterdam Avenue, where it now serves undergraduates. At present-day Columbia Law School, a handful of students in each year with the highest grade-point average are designated "Kent Scholars."

Footnote 24: See id.; see also supra note 19.

Footnote 25: Kent, supra note 7, at 550.

Footnote 26: James Kent, An Introductory Lecture to a Course of Law Lectures (1794), reprinted in 3 Colum. L. Rev. 330, 337 (1903) (footnote omitted). The subject of the lecture—the interplay between liberal arts and legal education—offers strong reasons for lawyers to have a broad educational background as well as for the lay public to have at least a rudimentary understanding of the legal system. See id.

Footnote 27: 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803). An 1835 letter describes an encounter between Kent and Chief Justice Marshall while the latter was in failing health and spirits. See Letter from James Kent to J. Meredith, Esq. (May 22, 1835), in Carson, supra note 1, at 667. Kent had, three years earlier, turned down the opportunity to write a "memoir" of the life of the Chief Justice. See Letter from James Kent to James Heoving (Feb. 28, 1832), in id.

Footnote 28: See Horton, supra note 6, at 95 (recounting the failures of Judge Parker at Harvard and Judge Wilson at the College of Philadelphia). Kent had other distractions: Jay, who finally became Governor in mid-1795, appointed him Master of Chancery early in 1796. See supra note 18. Within a year, Jay appointed Kent Recorder of the City of New York, a prestigious position at the New York Court of Common Pleas, and urged Kent to hold both positions simultaneously. See Horton, supra note 6, at 110-11.

Footnote 29: See Macgrane Coxe, Chancellor Kent at Yale (pt. 2), 17 Yale L.J. 553, 562 (1908); see also William Kent, Memoirs and Letters of James Kent 76 (1898).

Footnote 30: See Horton, supra note 6, at 95-96.

Footnote 31: Kent would later recount:

"This [appointment] was the grand object of my ambition for several years past. It appeared to me to be the true situation for the display of my knowledge, talents and virtue, the happy means of placing me beyond the crowd and pestilence of the city, of giving me opportunities to travel and to follow literary pursuits...."

J. Hampden Dougherty, 2 The Legal and Judicial History of New York 114 n. 2 (1911) (quoting James Kent).

Footnote 32: See Horton, supra note 6, at 95.

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