Chancellor James Kent Delivered Law Lectures
"There had previously been some lectures delivered, under the auspices of the College, by the distinguished Chancellor James Kent to such students as chose to hear him. That great jurist was compelled, under the constitution of the State as it then existed, to retire from the high judicial office upon which he shed such enduring lustre at the comparatively early age of sixty. He was then in the full maturity of his powers. It is unquestionable that the State, by rejecting his services at the time when they were most valuable, sustained a most serious check to what may be fitly called the classical development of its jurisprudence; for Kent was truly many-sided. He was a fine classical scholar, a great student, a most persuasive and lucid writer, accustomed to broad lines of thought, in character most admirable, and wholly unaffected and genume in manners, as befitted a man of eminent ability. He held judicial office for more than twenty-five years (from 1797 to 1823). His fitness for the position of Professor of Law had long been observed by the Trustees of the College; for they offered him the post in 1793, while he was at the bar, and again thirty years later, in 1823, when he retired from the bench."

Theodore W. Dwight, "Columbia College Law School, New York," 1 Green Bag 142-143 (1889)

James Kent (1763 - 1847) - First professor of law in Columbia College


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