An Unpublished Letter of Chancellor James Kent. was offered by Gov Jay & accepted the office of youngest Judge of the Supreme Court. This was the summit of my ambition. My object was to return back to Poughkeepsie, & resume my studies, & ride the circuits, & inhale country air, & enjoy otium cum dignitate. I never dreamed of volumes of reports & written opinions. Such things were not then thought of. I retired back to P in the Spring of 1798 & in that Summer rode all over the Western wilderness & was delighted. I returned home and began my Greek & Latin, & French, & English, & law classics as formerly, & made wonderful prog ress in books that year. In 1799 I was obliged to remove to Al bany, in that I might not be too much from home, & there I remained stationary for 24. years. When I came to the bench there (*) no reports or State precedents. The opinions from the bench were delivered ore tenus. We had no law of our own, & nobody knew what it was. I first introduced a thorough examination of cases & written opinions. In Jany T 1799 the 2d case re ported in ist Johnsons cases, of Ltidlow vs. Dale* is a sample of the earliest. The judges when we met all assumed that foreign sentences were only good prime facie. I presented and read my written opinion that they were conclusive & they all gave up to me & so I read it in court as it stands. This was the commencement of a new plan, & then was laid the first stone in the subse quently erected temple of our jurisprudence. Between that time & 1804 I rode my share of circuits, attended all the terms, & was never absent, & was always ready in every case by the day. I read in that time (3) and completely abridged the latter, & made copious digests of all the English new reports and treatises as they came out. I made much use of the Corpus Juris, 1 Word omitted in the original. 1 Probably January, 1806, ist Case in I John. v. Bowne. ' Blank in the original.
Ludlow
209
& as the Judges (Livingston excepted) knew nothing of French or Civil law I had immense advantage over them. I could generally put my Brethern to rout & carry my point by mysterious want of French & civil law. The Judges were republicans & very kindly disposed to everything that was French, & this enabled me without exciting any alarm or jealousy, to make free use of such authorities & thereby enrich our com mercial law. I gradually acquired preponderating influ ence with my brethern, & the volumes in Johnson after I became Ch. J in 1804 show it. The first practice was for each judge to give his portion of opinions when we all agreed, but that gradually fell off, but for the two or three last years before I left the bench, I gave the most of them. I remem ber that in 8th Johnson all the opinions one Term are per curiam. The fact is I wrote them all, & proposed that course to avoid existing jealousy & many a per curiam opinion was so inserted for that reason. Many of the cases decided during the 16 years I was in the Supr. Court were labored by me most unmercifully, but it was neces sary under the circumstances in order to subdue opposition. We had but few Ameri can precedents. One judge was democratic, and my brother Spencer particularly, of a bold, vigorous, dogmatic mind, & overbear ing manner. English authorities did not stand very high in those feverish times, & this led me a hundred times to attempt to bear down opposition, or flame it by ex hausting research & overwhelming author ity. Our Jurisprudence was probably on the whole improved by it. My mind certainly was roused, & was always kept ardent and inflamed by collision. In 1814 I was appointed Chancellor. The office I took with considerable reluctence. It had no claims. The person who left it was stupid, & it is a curious fact that for the nine years I was in that office, there was not a single decision, opinion or dictum of
