Kent family.

BIOGHIST REQUIRED James Kent (1763-1847) was an American jurist and legal scholar. He graduated from Yale College in 1781 and began to practice law at Poughkeepse, NY, in 1785 as an attorney, and in 1787 at the Bar. From 1791-1793 Kent was a representative of Dutchess County in the State Assembly. In 1793 he removed to New York, where Governer Jay, to whom Kent's Federalist sympathies were a strong recommendation, appointed him Master in Chancery for the City. Kent was the first professor of law at Columbia College in 1793-1798. He served the assembly again in 1796-1797. In 1797 he became Recorder of New York, in 1798 Judge of the Supreme Court of New York, in 1804 Chief Justice, and in 1814 Chancellor of New York. In 1822 Kent became a member of the convention to revise the state constitution where he unsuccessfully opposed the raising of the property qualification for African American voters. The following year Chancellor Kent resigned his office and resumed teaching at Columbia College. Out of the lectures he delivered at this time came his Commentaries on American Law (4 volumes, 1826-1830), modeled after his tremendous respect for William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769). Chancery law had been very unpopular during the Colonial and early American eras. Kent's opinions of this class are considered to be a basis for American equity jurisprudence. Kent was also responsible for first enunciating what would become the Cherokee doctrine, the idea that American Indian peoples, though subject, were sovereign nations.

BIOGHIST REQUIRED Kent married Elizabeth Bailey, and they had four children: Elizabeth (died in infancy), Elizabeth, Mary, and William Kent.

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