Benjamin Chew (November 19, 1722 – January 20, 1810) was an American lawyer and judge who served as the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the Province of Pennsylvania and later the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Born into a Quaker family, Chew was known for precision and brevity in his legal arguments and his excellent memory, judgment, and knowledge of statutory law. His primary allegiance was to the supremacy of law and the constitution.
Trained in law at an early age by Andrew Hamilton, Chew inherited his mentor's clients, the descendants of William Penn, including Thomas Penn and his brother Richard Penn Sr., and their sons, Governor John Penn, Richard Penn Jr., and John Penn. The Penn family was the basis of his private practice, and he represented them for six decades. He was also a slave owner.
Chew had a lifelong personal friendship with George Washington, who is said to have treated Chew's children "as if they were his own." Chew lived and practiced law in Center City Philadelphia, four blocks from the Pennsylvania State House, later renamed Independence Hall, and provided pro bono legal counsel on substantive law to America's Founding Fathers during their creation of the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Chew was born the son of Samuel Chew, a physician and first Chief Justice of Delaware Colony, and Mary Galloway Chew. He was born in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, at his father's plantation, Maidstone. Benjamin Chew's great-great-grandfather, John Chew (1587–1668), a successful merchant, arrived in Jamestown in 1622 on the ship Charitie; he was granted 1,600 acres (6.5 km2) of land in York County, Virginia.
The young Chew took an interest in the field of law at an early age. In 1736, when he was 15 years old, he began to read law in the Philadelphia offices of the former Attorney General of Pennsylvania Andrew Hamilton, who was then the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. The year before, Hamilton won a landmark case in American jurisprudence by his eloquent pro bono defense of publisher Peter Zenger. It established the precedent of truth as an absolute defense against charges of libel.
Chew was strongly influenced by Hamilton's ideas about a free press, and also the reading materials that Hamilton provided him, especially Sir Francis Bacon's Lawtracts. His understanding of English legal history, and especially the Charter of Liberties, enhanced by his later studies at London's Middle Temple, fostered Chew's enduring commitment to the civil liberties that are guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, especially the right to free speech.
After Hamilton's death in August 1741, Chew sailed to London to study law at the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, one of four Inns of Court. He began attending London theatre and read what friends recommended; his journal during these years shows his process of adopting aspects of English refinement expected of gentlemen, which he continued after his return to the American colonies. Following his father's death, Chew returned to Pennsylvania in 1744, and began practicing law in Dover, Delaware, while supporting his siblings and stepmother.
Chew was raised in a Quaker family, but he broke with Quaker tradition in 1741, when he agreed with his father, who had instructed a grand jury in New Castle, Delaware on the lawfulness of resistance to an armed force. In 1747, at age 25, Chew also went against Quaker tradition when he took the Oath of Attorney in Pennsylvania.
In 1754, Chew moved to Philadelphia, where he continued his legal responsibilities in both Delaware Colony and the Province of Pennsylvania for the rest of his life. After early appointments in the Quaker-dominated government following his second marriage, he entered private practice in 1757; the following year joined the Anglican Church, and began a path to influence outside the Quaker elite.
Mentored by Andrew Hamilton from an early age, Chew was highly effective in defending civil liberties and settling boundary disputes; he represented William Penn's descendants and their proprietorships as the largest landholders in the Province of Pennsylvania, for over 60 years.
In 1757, Chew entered private practice. He derived most of his income from that, managing his second wife's considerable estate, and collecting quit-rents from his various properties. Chew continued the family practice of investing in land in the Thirteen Colonies until the end of his life, expanding their holdings in the colonial-era Province of Pennsylvania, Province of Maryland, Delaware Colony, and Province of New Jersey.
In his early career, Chew often met with other ambitious young Philadelphia men at the London Coffee House. In 1766, they organized the Gloucester Fox Hunting Club, the first in the United States. This adoption of an English sport was part of their becoming gentlemen; they committed to hunting together in the country a couple of times a week.
Chew was Speaker of the Lower House for the Delaware counties (1753–1758); Attorney General and member of the Council of Pennsylvania (1754–1769); Recorder of Philadelphia City (1755–1774); Master of Rolls (1755–1774; analogous to the Master of the Rolls role in England and Wales); and Provincial Councillor of Pennsylvania (1755).
In 1757, he also was elected a trustee of the Academy and College of Philadelphia, which later became the University of Pennsylvania, and continued as such until 1791. He also taught numerous law students. Foremost among Benjamin Chew's law students were Brigade Major Edward Tilghman and Judge William Tilghman. "These Tilghmans were so successful in the law that they were both offered the post of State Chief Justice in 1805."
He was selected as a Philadelphia commissioner (1761); appointed as Register-General of Wills (1765–1777); and as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (1774–1777). During the American Revolutionary War, the Executive Council governing the new state removed him from office in 1777 and kept him in preventive detention in New Jersey until after the British forces left the Philadelphia region.
After the Revolutionary War, Chew resumed a position of influence in the new society and, eventually, its government. He was appointed a judge and president of the Pennsylvania High Court of Errors and Appeals (1791–1808), the court of last resort in the Commonwealth.
By the time he was 29 years old, Chew held a number of offices, both elected and appointed, in the Delaware and Pennsylvanian colonial governments. Appointed as Secretary of the Boundary Commission in 1750, Chew successfully represented the Penn family for the following eighteen years in their boundary dispute with first Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore and then Frederick Calvert, 6th Baron Baltimore of Maryland. The dispute was finally resolved in 1768, when the Boundary Commission oversaw the development and completion of the Mason–Dixon line between Pennsylvania and Maryland.
On June 19, 1754, the Albany Congress was held in Albany, New York. Twenty-one representatives of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire attended the Congress. Secretaries of each colony represented also attended, including Benjamin Chew of the Pennsylvania delegation. These secretaries helped formulate the plan to unite the colonies as a unified force at the time of threat from France during the Seven Years' War, known in North America as the French and Indian War, which began that year. The Albany Plan of Union was one of the first attempts to unite the British colonies. Benjamin Franklin proposed the plan but, as it greatly exceeded the scope of the congress, it was strongly debated by attendees. Six months later, Chew, aged 32, was appointed as Attorney General of the colony of Pennsylvania.