Jay, John (b. New York City, 12 Dec. 1745; d. Bedford, Westchester County, N.Y., 17 May 1829; interred at Jay family churchyard, Rye, N.Y.), chief justice, 1789–1795. The eldest son of Peter and Mary (Van Cortlandt) Jay, John Jay was educated privately until matriculation at King's College (Columbia University), from which he graduated in 1764. He read law with attorney Benjamin Kissam; four years later, he was admitted to the New York bar. His law practice prospered. In 1774, he married Sarah Van Brugh Livingston, the daughter of New York governor William Livingston.
The American Revolution altered Jay's career. A member of New York's Committee of Correspondence, he served in the First and Second Continental Congresses. As colonists edged toward rebellion, Jay opposed war with Britain. He was instrumental in formulating the Olive Branch Petition and seriously considered expatriation; however, after adoption of the
Declaration of Independence, his ambivalence dissipated. In 1776, Jay helped draft New York's constitution; and, while his attendance was erratic, he sat until 1779 as the state's chief justice. After 1778, national affairs occupied ever‐larger portions of Jay's calendar. In late 1778, New Yorkers again sent him to Congress, where he was elected president; less than a year later, he became minister plenipotentiary to Spain and in 1782 one of the commissioners in Paris to negotiate a peace treaty with England.
When Jay returned to New York in July 1784, his future as a diplomat was assured; yet, when offered positions as minister to Britain and then to France, he demurred in favor of law practice. Within weeks, Jay was drafted by Congress to be secretary of foreign affairs, a post he retained until 1789. His early misgivings about the impotence of the confederation solidified. By 1784–1785, he became a vocal advocate of a coercive, departmentalized federal government with vigorous executive and judicial branches and a Congress capable of securing economic stability. He took great satisfaction in the move toward a strong federation. While Jay was prevented by illness from writing more than three
Federalist essays, he gladly accepted President George
Washington's 1789 nomination as chief justice.
When the Court convened in the New York City Stock Exchange, Jay expected that its original and exclusive jurisdictions might be exploited to ensure the supremacy of federal law and to force state compliance with key obligations such as the war debts addressed in the Treaty of Peace. (See
Treaties and Treaty Power.) He was disappointed. Jay's Court lacked legitimacy. Antifederalist antipathy toward the federal judiciary still carried weight; the justices'
circuit riding duties eroded morale.
Still, Jay's contributions were substantial. In a 1792 New York circuit court hearing of
Hayburn's Case, he defended the
separation of powers by refusing to allow federal courts to pass judgment, as an Act of Congress mandated, on the claims of invalid pensioners. He made creative use of
grand jury charges to educate the citizenry on the rudiments of federal governance. On two occasions, Jay wielded federal
judicial power in defense of both the Treaty of Paris and American sovereignty in relations with Europe. His dissent on circuit in
Ware v. Hylton (1796) paved the way for High Court insistence upon adherence to treaty provisions in a 1796 appeal of the same case; and in
Glass v. The Sloop Betsy (1794), the Jay Court ruled against France's use of its American consul as a prize court.
Jay finally concluded that the Court was an ineffective instrument of domestic unification and diplomacy. When Georgia responded to the Court's ruling against the state's claim of
sovereign immunity in
Chisholm v. Georgia (1793) with defiance and the introduction of the
Eleventh Amendment in Congress, Jay abandoned the federal bench. In 1794, while still sitting as chief justice, he sailed to England as envoy extraordinaire to defuse tensions with Britain over unpaid debts, sequestration of Loyalist estates, and New World trading rights. The Jay Treaty established mixed commissions to resolve economic disputes, granted trade concessions to Britain, and shifted responsibility for payment of defaulted loans to Congress. While resistance to the treaty was formidable, the Senate ratified it in 1795.
Elected governor of New York in absentia, Jay resigned as chief justice in 1795. When President John Adams asked him to resume his duties as chief justice in 1800, he refused on the ground that the Court lacked “energy, weight and dignity.” Nor could he abide Jeffersonian America. In 1801, Jay retired to his farm in Westchester County, New York; despite ill health, he devoted the next quarter century to the Episcopal church and antislavery causes.
Bibliography
Richard Morris, and John Jay , the Nation and the Court (1967).
Sandra VanBurkleo , ‘Honour, Justice and Interest’: John Jay's Republican Politics and Statesmanship on the Federal Bench, Journal of the Early Republic 4 (Fall 1984): 239–274.
Sandra F. VanBurkleo
