john jay
first chief justice
biography
John Jay was born in New York City and educated at King’s Collegelater graduating in 1764. He became a lawyer in 1768 and soon became one of the most respected lawyers in the colonies. Jay represented the point of view of the American merchants in protesting the British restrictions on the commercial activities of colonies. He was thus elected to the Continental Congress in 1774 and again the next year. Jay drafted the first constitution of the state of New York, and was appointed the chief justice of New York in 1777.
When the American Revolution began, Jay was made a member of the New York Committee of Correspondence, the Continental Congress, and the New York Provincial Congress. He was president of the Continental Congress until that body sent him to Spain to obtain a loan and an endorsement of American independence, which was a failure.
In Paris, Jay was one of the commissioners who negotiated the Treaty of Paris with Great Britain in 1782, ending the American Revolution. In 1784, after the peace was signed, he returned home to find that Congress had named him secretary of foreign affairs. In Collaboration with Alexander Hamilton and James Madison about the weakness of the Confederation, he became a strong proponent of a stronger national government. He collaborated with them to write a series of articles called the Federalist Papers, which urged the ratification of the Constitution.
When a new government was formed under the Constitution, Jay became the first chief justice of the United States, as appointed by President George Washington. In 1794, when war with Great Britain threatened over unsettled controversies in the Treaty of Paris, he was sent to London to settle many problems remaining from the Revolution. An agreement, known as Jay's Treaty, was drawn up, providing that the British would withdraw from areas they still held in the Northwest Territory and that the United States would pay debts contracted by its citizens before the Revolution. It also established joint commissions to settle disputed parts of the boundary between the United States and Canada. Thomas Jefferson and others assailed Jay for having failed to secure Britain's promise to stop interfering with United States ships at sea.
On his return to the U.S. Jay had discovered that during his absence he had been elected governor of the state of New York. He resigned from the Court and served two terms as governor from 1795 to 1801. He then retired to his estate near Bedford, N.Y., where he died on May 17, 1829.
