Legal scholar. The son of a Yorkshire solicitor of Huguenot origin (originally De Quesne), he was articled to a conveyancer in Halifax. Breaking free, he went to Downing College, where he became President of the Union, and achieved a First in Law and History in 1874 - for a brief period Law and History was a single Tripos. Elected to a Fellowship at Downing, he then produced a brilliant series of prize-winning essays which were both historical and reformist : on primogeniture, women's property rights, and property for charitable uses. They helped shape the Mortmain and Charitable Uses Act of 1891. Kenny was Member of Parliament for Barnsley, 1885 - 1888. A Gladstonian Liberal, he spoke for the abolition of primogeniture and, in the name of freedom of religious opinion, for reform of the law against blasphemy. He returned to Cambridge as reader in English law and succeeded Frederic William Maitland as Downing Professor of the Laws of England, which chair he held from 1907 to 1918. His teaching was renown, his casebooks influential, and his textbooks, particular "Outlines of Commercial Law", are of a sort that exist in subjects like law and medicine: long after the author is gone and most of the book has been rewritten several times by later editors, it is still brand-named after its first author. Kenny's "Law of the Air" (10907) invented a new subject just as manned flight was stepping beyond eccentric experiment. He was elected FBA in 1909. The Kenny gates at Downing College are named after him and his portrait hangs in the Dining Hall.

Kenny's death was on 18 March 1930 at the Evelyn Nursing Home, Cambridge. The cremated remains of both daughters: Agnes Mary Ralph Kenny (Cambridge Crematorium: January 17 1966) and Gertrude Muriel Raplh (Cambridge Crematorium: October 2 1958) are interred in the same grave as their parents.

Kenny, Courtney Stanhope.
Adm. pens. at DOWNING, May 17, 1871.
[Elder s. of William Fenton, solicitor, of Halifax and Ripon.] B. Mar. 18, 1847, at Park House, Ripon [The Times and D.N.B. give Halifax].
Matric. Michs. 1871;
Scholar;
Winchester Reading prize, 1874;
Chancellor's Legal medal, 1875;
(Law and Hist. Trip., 1st Class, 1874);
LL.B. 1875;
LL.M. 1878;
Yorke prize, 1877, 1878, 1879;
LL.D. 1887.
Fellow, 1885;
Hon. Fellow, 1918.
President of the Union, 1874.
Adm. Solicitor, 1869;
practised in Halifax for two years.
Adm. at Lincoln's Inn, Jan. 21, 1878.
Called to the Bar, Jan. 26, 1881.
On the South Eastern Circuit. Law Lecturer at Trinity, 1881-6. University Reader in English Law, 1888-1907.
Downing Professor of the Laws of England, 1907-18. M.P. for Barnsley, 1885 and 1886-8. J.P. for Cambridgeshire, 1896-1930, and for Cambridge, 1890.
Alderman of Cambridge Borough Council, 1895-9. Alderman of the Cambridgeshire County Council, 1901-20. Chairman of the County Quarter Sessions, 1912-22. One of the greatest authorities on English Law. F.B.A., 1909.
A staunch Liberal of the old school. Held in high esteem for his unfailing courtesy, and sound judgment. Author, Outlines on Criminal Law, and of many legal essays.
Died Mar. 18, 1930, aged 83, at Cambridge, as the result of a street accident. Bequeathed £500 to the fund for extending and improving the buildings of Downing. (Inns of Court;
Law Lists;
Foster, Men at the Bar;
D.N.B.;
Burke, L.G. of Ireland;
Who was Who, 1929-40;
The Times, Mar. 19, 1930;
Cambridge Review, Apr. 25, 1930.)