JAMES

See also:

• KENT
• KENT, EARLS AND DUKES OF
• JAMES KENT (1763-1847)
• KENT, WILLIAM (1685-1748)

KENT (1763-1847)  , American jurist, was born at Philippi in New York State on the 31st of July 1763 . He graduated at Yale College in 1781, and began to practise law at Poughkeepsie, 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 state Assembly . In 1793 he removed to New York, where Governor Jay, to whom the young lawyer's Federalist sympathies were a strong recommendation, appointed him a master in chancery for the city . He was professor of law in Columbia College in 1793-98 and again served in the Assembly in 1796-97 . 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 . In 1822 he became a member of the convention to revise the state constitution . Next year, Chancellor Kent resigned his office and was re-elected to his former chair . Out of the lectures he now delivered grew the Commentaries on American Lau' (4 vols., 1826-1830), which by their learning, range and lucidity of style won for him a high and permanent place in the estimation of both English and American jurists . Kent rendered most essential service to American jurisprudence while serving as chancellor . Chancery law had been very unpopular during the colonial period, and had received little development, and no decisions had been published . His judgments of this class (see Johnson's Chancery Reports, 7 vols., 1816-1824) cover a wide range of topics, and are so thoroughly considered and developed as unquestionably to form the basis of American equity jurisprudence .

Kent was a

man of great purity of character and of singular simplicity and guilelessness . He died in New York on the 12th of December 1847 . To Kent we owe several other works (including a Commentary on International Law) of less importance than the Commentaries . See J . Duer's Discourse on the Life, Character and Public Services of James Kent (1848) ; The National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, vol. ii . (1852) ; W . Kent, Memoirs and Letters of Chancellor Kent (Boston, 1898) .