KENT, James.

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Dissertations: Being the Preliminary Part of a Course of Law Lectures. First edition of these three lectures by a major figure in early American law, an influential contribution to American discourses on liberty, constitutionalism, and government. Although the Declaration of Independence described liberty as an inalienable natural right, opinion among the Founding Fathers was far from unanimous. Many understood liberty as a right that could only be constructed by a strong civil society - a civil right, rather than an innate, natural one. This concern informed the adoption of the US Constitution in 1789, as a robust framework under which a strong civil society could be constructed.James Kent (1763-1847), later a Chief Justice of the New York Supreme Court, eloquently advocates the "civil rights" conception of liberty. He examines the duties of civil government, the political developments of the American Revolution, and the theory of international law. These lectures were originally delivered by Kent as the first professor of law at Columbia College (later University). John Adams enrolled his son in Kent's lectures, and remarked that he was "much pleased with the Lecture and esteem[ed] the talents and Character of the Professor" (ANB).The Dissertations were cited by Arthur Brown in his Compendious View of the Civil Law and of the Law of the Admiralty (Dublin, 1797-9), making them the first American legal publication cited by a European writer (Stychin, p. 442).

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