Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/857

 n. KENT: AN AMERICAN LAW STUDENT 843 (^) 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 reported in 1st Johnsons cases, of Ludlow vs. Dale 2 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 subsequently 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 (*) 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, & as the Judges (Liv- ingston 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 and 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 influence 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 remember that in 8th Johnson all the opinions one Term are per curiam. The fact is I wrote them all, & proposed that course to avoid •Probably January, 1806, 1st Case in 1 John. Ludlow r. Bowne. ' For a note indicating an error of memory in Chancellor Kent's allusion to the tenor of this decision, see Professor Schofield's article in 1 Illinois T>aw Rev. p. 257. — Ena.
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