William Jay is the biography of one of the most important Supreme Court justices involved in the abolition movement. William Jay was an American abolitionist and jurist, son of the Governor of New York and first U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay. An enthusiastic member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, whose constitution he drafted, Jay stood with James Birney at the head of the conservative abolitionists, and by his calm, logical, and judicial writings exerted for many years a powerful influence.