James Kent

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James Kent (1763-1847), influential American jurist, is best known for his "Commentaries on American Law". He was a leading conservative of his time.

James Kent was born on July 3, 1763, at Fredericksburgh, N.Y. His father was a lawyer and farmer. James entered Yale College in 1777 at the age of 14 and graduated 4 years later with honors. After studying law with a prominent Poughkeepsie, N.Y., attorney, he was admitted to the bar in 1785. In April he married Elizabeth Bailey; it was a most happy marriage and they had four children.

Kent thought that the legal profession would "always enable Gentlemen of active Geniuses to attain a decisive Superiority in Government," and his career showed this concept to be valid. From 1785 to 1793 Kent practiced in Poughkeepsie. He served two consecutive terms in the New York Assembly, starting in 1791. He moved to New York City in 1793, and the following year he was appointed Columbia College's first law professor. After an auspicious start, attendance dropped noticeably, and he resigned in the spring of 1797. Kent was elected to another term in the Assembly in 1796. John Jay, governor of New York, appointed him master in chancery in 1796 and recorder of the city in 1797.

In 1798 Kent was made a justice on the New York Supreme Court, the main function of which was appellate. Kent helped adjust the law to contemporary conditions. His rigorous and systematic work habits set a good example for his fellow judges, and he was responsible for adoption of the practice of writing opinions, which in a short time led to published reports in New York. He was promoted to chief justice in 1804 and remained on the court until 1814, when he was appointed chancellor, a position he held until reaching the mandatory retirement age of 60. As chancellor, Kent was largely responsible for the creation of equity jurisdiction in the United States.

By a quirk in the constitution of 1777, Kent and his fellow judges reviewed all bills passed by the legislature. Thus he was part of the governing process for 25 years. Kent and other conservative judges incurred the wrath of the majority of the electorate, culminating in the calling of a constitutional convention in 1821. As a delegate, Kent was one of a small but articulate group that fought unsuccessfully against such changes as a sharp reduction in property requirements for voting. The convention reaffirmed the provision that the judiciary retire at 60 and thus guaranteed Kent's retirement.

After Kent retired, he left Albany, where he had resided since 1798, and returned to New York City. In 1824 he began another series of law lectures at Columbia, based on the immense research that had gone into his judicial opinions. This research also provided the basis for Commentaries on American Law. For the rest of his life he was constantly revising the book and had just completed the sixth edition when he died on Dec. 12, 1847.

Further Reading

William Kent, Memoirs and Letters of James Kent (1898), provides some interesting letters and excerpts from autobiographical sketches. John Theodore Horton, James Kent: A Study in Conservatism, 1763-1847 (1939), successfully relates Kent's work and thought to his environment.

James Kent was a U.S. attorney, judge, and scholar who played a central role in adapting the common law of England into the common law of the United States. As a justice and later chief justice of the New York Supreme Court and a chancellor of the New York Court of Chancery (then the highest judicial officer in New York), Kent wrote many decisions that became foundations of nineteenth-century law. Kent's great legal treatise Commentaries on American Law (1826-30) offered the first comprehensive analysis of U.S. law.

Kent was born July 31, 1763, in Putnam County, New York. In 1777 he entered Yale University. The Revolutionary War periodically disrupted his studies. During one of his forced suspensions, Kent read Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69), which led him to decide on a legal career. Following college he secured a clerkship with the attorney general of New York, and he was admitted to the New York bar in 1785.

Kent began his law practice in Poughkeep- sie, New York. In 1790 he was elected to the New York state legislature, where he served three terms. A steadfast Federalist and supporter of the U.S. Constitution, Kent was committed to a strong national government. After losing a congressional race in 1793, he moved to New York City, where he practiced law and served as a professor of law at Columbia University.

Kent became a member of the New York Supreme Court in 1798, and served as chief justice from 1806 to 1814. He is credited with transforming the court into a professional, respected bench. He introduced the practice of issuing written as well as oral opinions, and was instrumental in appointing an official reporter to collect the written opinions into official law reports. Kent believed that such reports were necessary so that past precedents could be read and cited more easily.

During his time on the court, Kent addressed the then burning issue of whether English precedents could claim the authority of law in the United States. Some members of the New York bar felt that the American Revolution would be unfinished until the United States had a body of law of its own, untainted by the laws of its former imperial master.

Kent disagreed. He argued that the predictability of justice was an indispensable requirement for achieving the commercial progress and stable social order sought by the Federalists. He further suggested that citation and the following of precedent were the best means to judicial predictability. Like many Federalists he admired the stability of the English common law and he maintained that it was the best system ever devised to ensure justice and order. Although he did not follow precedent blindly, Kent believed that previous decisions should not be expressly overturned except when absolutely necessary.

Kent was appointed chancellor of the New York Court of Chancery in 1814. This court was a court of equity, which applied rules of fairness, rather than a court of law, which applied common and statutory law to the resolution of disputes. Most of the matters before it involved commercial disputes. As chancellor Kent was empowered to do justice based on the particular facts of each case and the equitable principles that had developed in England. He used his equity powers to effect his sense that commercial bargains ought to be subject to some equitable scrutiny to ensure that unconscionable advantage was not taken.

By law Kent was forced to retire from the bench at age sixty, in 1823. He returned to the private practice of law and was reappointed to a professorship at Columbia. He was consulted by lawyers and judges about legal issues, and gave a series of lectures at Columbia that became, in revised form, the core of his Commentaries. This treatise, which was published in four volumes, was similar to Blackstone's Commentaries in scope but did not follow Blackstone's precisely in form. Kent's Commentaries covered international law, the Constitution and government of the United States, the municipal laws of the states, personal rights, and real and personal property. It quickly became an authoritative and classic example of the U.S. treatise tradition. Five editions were published in Kent's lifetime, and many more followed in the nineteenth century. The twelfth edition (1873) was edited by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Kent died December 12, 1847, in New York City.

Quotes:

"He who considers disease results to be the disease itself, and expects to do away with these as diseases, is insane. It is an insanity in medicine, an insanity that has grown out of the milder forms of mental disorder in science, crazy whims."

"While Homeopathy itself is a perfect science, its truth is only partially known. The truth itself relates to the Divine, the knowledge relates to man."

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