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While many lamented Kent's departure from the bench, little could they have known that the Chancellor would live for another quarter-century[93] and—only after his mandated retirement for age—make his most famous contribution, his Commentaries on American Law. After shedding his robes, Kent returned to New York City and Columbia College. He did not initially intend to publish the law lectures he delivered there—Kent credits his son with convincing him to assemble his lectures into the Commentaries.[94] In undertaking the colossal task of constructing these treatises, he had no true model. No existing work had ever sought to examine the American legal system as a whole. Authors had instead sought to speak to individual legal topics in treatises, and even those were few in number.[95] Thus, Kent's four-volume work, which he would dedicate to his friend Johnson,[96] was truly an ambitious project that would become the model for the texts we all rely on today. There already being ample comment on the Commentaries,[97] I will not dwell on that subject, but would note that the work was immediately celebrated. With each of the first five editions, all personally supervised by Kent, [98] readers around the country hailed the Commentaries as a "Law Bible." [99] As with most things in life, of course there were also dissenting voices. A young but soon-to-be-famous graduate of the Harvard Law School— Oliver Wendell Holmes—was asked to edit the twelfth edition, slated for 1873. "In a letter to John Norton Pomeroy [dated] May 22, 1872[,] Holmes commented: 'I . . . have to keep a civil tongue in my head while I am his [Kent's] valet— but his arrangement is chaotic—he has no general ideas except wrong ones and his treatment of special topics is often confused to the last degree." ' [100] As time-consuming as the Commentaries were, they were not the only professional tasks that filled Kent's "retirement" years. Upon his return to New York City, he resumed the practice of law, this time with clients including the most prominent members of the bar, who came to consult the oracle on Pine Street.[101] The questions submitted to him were among the most novel facing jurists of his day. Daniel Webster, for example, asked Kent, in a January 21, 1830, letter, whether the consent of the Senate was necessary for the President's power of removal.[102] Sometimes, Kent's mail concerned weighty issues in another sense. For example, in a personal letter, Justice Story disclosed his misgivings about the future of the United States Supreme Court: I think it will, &, I fear, it must lose, that strong hold of the public confidence which it has hitherto been fortunate enough to secure—when we lost Ch. Justice Marshall we lost our great support, & our truest glory . . . . Personally my Brethren are kind to me; & I have not the slightest reason to complain of any want of courtesy—or even of confidence—But I feel daily, that I am among them, without any of the cheering influences of former days—In short, I am sick at heart; & now go to the discharge of my judicial duties in the Supreme Court with a firm belief that the future cannot be as the past. There is much which I could say to you in a private conversation, which I do not, even in a confidential letter, as this is, I do not [sic] venture to write. But I could state facts to you, which would fully satis[fy] you, that you have not exaggerated to yourself [the] evils of the change.[103] Columbia College proved to be the only entity capable of luring Kent from his office on Pine Street. The Trustees convinced him to resume his professorship despite Daniel Webster's proposal that he become President of Dartmouth College.[104] Webster even asked Justice Story whether there might be room for the ex-Chancellor on the United States Supreme Court.[105] Kent, however, remained in New York City. It was there, in his Union Square apartment, that he died on December 12, 1847, at age 84.[106] He had outlived most members of his college class, many close friends,[107] and both siblings.
Footnote 93: Kent credited his longevity and excellent health to "the love of simple diet, & to all kinds of temperance, & never read late nights. I rambled daily with my wife on foot over the hills, we were never asunder." Kent, supra note 7, at 550. Footnote 94: See id. at 553. Footnote 95: See Horton, supra note 6, at 269 n.21. Footnote 96: See id. at 270. Johnson had dedicated his chancery reports to Kent. See id. at 270 n.24. Footnote 97: See, e.g., id. at 269-92; Carson, supra note 1, at 670-71; Coxe, supra note 29, at 561-67; Langbein, supra note 58, at 585-94. For a trio of contemporary reviews of the first, seventh, and twelfth editions of Kent's Commentaries on American Law, see 24 N. Am. Rev. 345 (1827); 74 N. Am. Rev. 108 (1852); and 242 N. Am. Rev. 383 (1874) ("The publication of a new edition of a law book is not usually a matter of general interest; but an exception may well be made in favor of this. There is probably no lawyer, not otherwise conspicuous, whose name is more widely known and respected among the public at large in this country than that of Chancellor Kent."). Footnote 98: See Horton, supra note 6, at 301. Kent worked on the sixth edition but did not live to see it published. See id. at 301 n. 129. Footnote 99: That comment is attributed to Chief Justice Mellen of Maine. See id. at 301. Phillip Lindsley, President of the University of Nashville, suggested that the Commentaries on American Law be edited for use as a college textbook. Kent adopted Lindsley's proposal, and the volume describing constitutional law became a text used at the University of Nashville, West Point, Harvard, and Yale, among others. See id. at 302. Footnote 100: Grant Gilmore, The Ages of American Law 120-21 (1977) (quoting M. Howe, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes—The Proving Years (1870-1882), at 16 (1963)). Footnote 101: See Horton, supra note 6, at 268. Footnote 102: See id. at 268 n. 15. Kent opined that "'theoretically it ought to be and was intended to be; but that usage made it inconvenient to require it after the exercise of the power by the President exclusively had long been acquiesced in." ' Id. (quoting James Kent) Footnote 103: Letter from Justice Story to James Kent Regarding the Charles River Bridge Case (June 26, 1837), in The Retirement of Federal Judges, 51 Harv. L. Rev 409, 412-13 (1938). Footnote 104: See Coxe, supra note 29, at 568. Footnote 105: See id. at 568-69. Footnote 106: See id. at 557; Dillon, supra note 18, at 258. The bar association of the City of New York soon thereafter passed a resolution stating, "All will unite in deploring the loss of him, who for a long series of years has been the unquestioned head of American jurisprudence." Cassoday, supra note 8, at 152. Footnote 107: Though 16 years older, Kent outlived Story by two years. See Cassoday, supra note 8, at 146. For an excerpt of the letter that Kent wrote to Story's widow upon the Justice's death, see id. at 147-48.
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