The first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Jay was an accomplished diplomat who negotiated Jay's Treaty (1794), resolving important grievances between the United States and Great Britain. Jay was a descendant of French Huguenot immigrants, born in New York into a wealthy and politically powerful Protestant family. He was educated at King's College (later Columbia University), from which he graduated in 1764, and after several years' legal study, he was admitted to the bar in 1768. In 1774 he was named as a delegate to the First Continental Congress where he fought against a radical move toward a break with Great Britain. However, as resolutions against Parliament passed, the politically conservative Jay acceded to the will of the majority and wrote the Congress's "Address to the People of Great Britain," in which he censured Parliament for its taxation of the colonists without their consent.

Jay accepted an invitation to help draft the New York constitution, and upon its ratification, he was elected chief justice of the state supreme court. A provision of the constitution permitted the chief justice to also serve as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, and he was sent to Philadelphia. Almost immediately upon his arrival in 1778, the delegates elected him president of the Congress.

In 1779 Jay began his diplomatic career when the Continental Congress appointed him as its representative in Spain. His work there yielded little direct Spanish cooperation with the American Revolutionaries, and in spring 1782 he left Spain for Paris as part of a congressional peace commission that also included John Adams, Henry Laurens, and Benjamin Franklin. Once in Paris, Jay and Franklin--Adams and Laurens had not yet joined the commission--agreed to ignore Congress's instructions to keep France informed of every detail in the negotiations and began direct talks with British representatives. Before doing so, however, Jay insisted on implicit recognition of U.S. independence in the wording of the British commissioners' instructions. Once the formal discussions began, he used his legal training to draft much of the language of the preliminary agreement of November 30, 1782, which formed the basis of the final Treaty of Paris (1783). This final treaty--drawn up between Great Britain and the United States once France and Spain agreed to end their war with the British--secured favorable terms for the United States, recognizing independence and enlarging the new nation's borders to the Mississippi River.

Upon his return to the United States in 1784, Jay was elected secretary of foreign affairs under the Articles of Confederation. In this position he became one of the most important national officials in the United States and exerted considerable influence on the Continental Congress. However, he was often frustrated and managed to successfully conclude only two treaties. One was with Morocco, which opened up trade and avoided paying any tribute to one of the Barbary States, and the other was an improved trade agreement with France. Jay invested time and energy in negotiating the Jay-Gardoqui Treaty with Spain, only to have it rejected by Congress: Seven states voted for the agreement, and it needed nine states for acceptance. Jay also found himself vilified for his willingness to accept Spain's closure of the Mississippi for 25 years. He continued his supervision of U.S. foreign policy until 1789, after the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, when Thomas Jefferson became secretary of state.

Jay's experiences with foreign policy and public office during and after the Revolutionary War (1775-83) had convinced him of the need for a stronger national government. Though he was not a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, he wrote six Federalist Papers--dealing mainly with international affairs--in favor of the new system. He was also instrumental in convincing the New York state convention to ratify the Constitution in 1788.

Once the new government was in place, President George Washington appointed Jay chief justice of the Supreme Court. As chief justice, Jay continued to support a strong federal government, and in 1793 he delivered the majority opinion in the Court's first important case, Chisholm V. Georgia, which upheld the right of an individual to sue a state in federal court. An outcry ensued over this blow to state sovereignty, and in 1798 the states ratified the Eleventh Amendment, which denied such federal judicial power. However, Jay's tenure as chief justice was very important in establishing the workings of the early Court and in strengthening the national government.

In 1794 President Washington appointed Jay as special envoy to Great Britain in order to resolve a conflict stemming from the Royal Navy's seizure of U.S. merchant ships. The treaty Jay negotiated resolved many unsettled questions in Anglo-American relations. Under the terms of Jay's Treaty, Britain agreed to remove its troops from the western territories; pay reparations to merchants; and permit some trade in the West Indies, though under restrictive conditions. Many people, especially those who were organizing the Democratic-Republican Party, were dissatisfied with the treaty because it did not recognize neutral rights to trade with nations at war with Britain. Furthermore, Jay's Treaty committed the United States to repay outstanding British prerevolutionary debts, which state laws had previously prevented from being collected. Jay was accused of betraying national interests, and a huge political storm ensued. The public debate over Jay's Treaty contributed to the political rivalry between the Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republicans.

In 1795 Jay was elected governor of New York and stepped down as the Supreme Court's chief justice; as governor he signed an act calling for the gradual abolition of slavery in the state. In the election of 1800 he refused to call a special session of the old state legislature to ensure a Federalist Party slate of electors--the new legislature would be dominated by Democratic Republicans--because, as Jay explained, it would be "a measure for party purposes which I think it would not become me to adopt." He declined, in 1800, to be reappointed as chief justice of the Supreme Court because he believed that the job would be too rigorous for him and he was looking forward to retiring from public life. After two terms as governor, Jay moved to Bedford, New York, where he lived a private and religious life until his death on May 17, 1829.

Bibliography:

1)         Richard B. Morris, Witnesses at the Creation: Hamilton, Madison, Jay and the Constitution (New York: Harper & Row, 1985)

2)         Walter Stahr, John Jay: Founding Father (New York: Hambledon and London, 2005)

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