awake
In September 1789, George Washington offered Jay the position of Secretary of State. At the time he held the position of Secretary of Foreign Affairs in the Continental Congress. Jay declined. Washington responded by offering him the new position. that of Chief Justice of the United States, which Jay accepted. Washington officially nominated Jay on September 24, 1789, the same day he signed the Judiciary Act of 1789 which created the position of Chief Justice into law. Jay was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate on September 26, 1789, and received his commission the same day. His term began with his taking the oath of office on October 19, 1789. Washington also nominated John Blair, William Cushing, James Wilson, James Iredell and John Rutledge as Associate Judges.
The Court's business through its first three years primarily involved the establishment of rules and procedure; reading of commissions and admission of attorneys to the bar; and the Justices' duties in "riding circuit," or presiding over cases in the circuit courts of the various federal judicial districts. No convention existed that precluded the involvement of Supreme Court Justices in political affairs, and Jay used his light workload as a Justice to freely participate in the business of Washington's administration. He used his circuit riding to spread word throughout the states of Washington's commitment to neutrality, then published reports of French minister Edmond-Charles Genet's campaign to win American support for France.
Jay established an early precedent for the Court's independence in 1790, when Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton wrote to Jay requesting the Court's endorsement of legislation that would assume the debts of the states. Jay replied that the Court's business was restricted to ruling on the constitutionality of cases being tried before it and refused to allow it to take a position either for or against the legislation.
Jay left the court in 1795 to become Governor of New York, a position he held from 1795 to 1801. He became his state's leading opponent of slavery. His first two attempts to emancipate the slaves in New York failed in 1777 and in 1785, but his third attempt succeeded in 1799. The 1799 act, a gradual emancipation act, that he signed into law eventually brought about the emancipation of all slaves there before his death in 1829.