James Wilson was born in Scotland in 1742 and arrived in Pennsylvania in his early twenties; he later became eventually a delegate to the Second Continental Congress and signer of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. This report constituted the first draft of the United States Constitution. His position at once aligned him with the conservative elements in Pennsylvania politics and affirmed his strong nationalism. That position proved politically costly, and in 1777 he lost his seat in Congress when his aggressive frontier constituents viewed him as out of step with the fast-moving revolution. For example, in Henfield’s Case (1793) he attempted to establish the principle of a common law of federal crimes. America’s economy, like that of Scotland, would prosper to the extent that it embraced principles of international commercial law or, as it was called then, the law of nations. For one thing, he tried to influence the enactment of legislation in Pennsylvania favorable to land speculators. He wrote a pamphlet titled "Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament." Following ratification of the new Constitution, he searched for an appointment to the Federal government. Wilson, who wrote only a few opinions, did not achieve the success on the Supreme Court that his capabilities and experience promised. Early Life Wilson emigrated from Scotland in 1765 and took up the study of law. Put to the test on the bench, however, Wilson discovered that his views on the sovereignty of the people had less support than he supposed, at least when that sovereignty trumped state authority. Wilson argued in support of greater popular control of governance, a strong national government, and for legislative representation to be proportional to population; he championed the popularly elected House o… Few early Americans, as the Lectures make clear, wrote with greater authority and passion about the jury. This tract circulated widely in England and America and established him as a Whig leader. On the July 1 and 2 ballots on the issue, however, he voted in the affirmative and signed the Declaration of Independence on August 2. At the Constitutional Convention, he spoke out for popular sovereignty and is credited with forcing the compromise of the Electoral College. For example, he insisted that the will of the people tended to mirror their needs through the law, and he used the jury system to prove this proposition. (2003): 183–93. Despite the dislocations created by the war, Wilson’s economic fortunes blossomed. Wilson’s quest for wealth became increasingly apparent. 1. 167–70, and in Stephen B. Presser and Jamil S. Zainaldin, Law and Jurisprudence in American History: Cases and Materials, 5th ed. Wilson argued strongly in the Lectures for the importance of federal judicial review. Rarely missing a session, he sat on the Committee of Detail and in many other ways applied his excellent knowledge of political theory to convention problems. Wilson made the first proposal for popular election of the President. In 1776, reflecting the wishes of his constituents, he joined the moderates in Congress voting for a 3-week delay in considering Richard Henry Lee's resolution of June 7 for independence. Its disposition included hundreds of thousands of dollars in real property in Pennsylvania and the Gibraltar Iron Works in Bucks County. The Assembly repealed the charter in Pennsylvania; Wilson’s opponents painted him as more interested in his own economic advantage than in the well-being of his fellow citizens. He was one of America's first legal philosophers and was among the noted men who signed the United States Declaration of Independence and is often cited as among the most influential constitutional convention delegates, second only to James Madison. Wilson was a distinguished lawyer who eventually served on the U.S. Supreme Court. Yet even his sharpest critics stood in awe of the erudition of Considerations and of Wilson’s general intelligence. Clinton Rossiter (1961). Wilson’s Lectures underscore that he objected to the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 not because it was too democratic but because it granted too much popular authority to the legislative branch at the expense of the two other branches, the executive and the judicial, which he considered to have a popular base as well. James Wilson and the American Constitution, Alexander Hamilton and the American Revolution I, Alexander Hamilton and the American Revolution II, American Political Sermons: A Bibliography, American Political Writing during the Founding 1760-1805, Colonial Origins of the American Constitution, Farrand on the Federal Convention of 1787, Federalist: An Introduction by Carey and McClellan, Forrest McDonald, “The Founding Fathers and the Economic Order”, Jefferson: An Introduction to his Writings, Madison’s Notes: Analytical Index (Elliot ed. The bank had established a modicum of fiscal stability during the revolutionary crisis, but as significantly, Wilson was indebted to it for more than thirty thousand dollars in loans. Wilson used his university position to deliver his Lectures on Law. Wilson was one of only six persons to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution; only Gouverneur Morris spoke more frequently in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787; and scholars rank Wilson as the second most influential member of that convention, behind only James Madison. Fair Use: This material is put online to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. Ultimately, his son, Bird, was able to pay the great bulk of his debts in full. Wilson has been considered a conservative because of his opposition to the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, but at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 he was the only founder to argue for “the direct election of the executive, the direct and proportional election of senators, and the principle of ‘one person, one vote.’”iv. Based on his new concept of the perpetually sovereign people, Wilson confidently proclaimed that the proposed Bill of Rights was neither essential nor necessary. Only Gouverneur Morris delivered more speeches. Wilson attempted to blend the ideas of liberty and the rule of law with the new idea of popular sovereignty. Wilson seemed a likely possibility, but because of his preoccupation with land and business ventures, Washington ultimately turned to Oliver Ellsworth, a Connecticut Federalist, a member of the Philadelphia Convention, and the principal framer of the Judiciary Act of 1789. For further discussion of Wilson’s support of democratic institutions see chapter 4 of this volume. William Pierce stated that "no man is more clear than, copious and comprehensive than Mr. Wilson, yet he is no great Orator.". Wilson was a prime target. Wilson did leave a legacy in the law and in his contributions to the creation of the American republic. Wilson reached the apex of his career in the Constitutional Convention (1787), where his influence was probably second only to that of Madison. He was unable to return to the February 1798 term of the Court because his creditors would have had him imprisoned. ), Madison’s Notes: Analytical Index (Hunt ed. Copyright: The Introduction, Collector’s Foreword, Collector’s Acknowledgments, Annotations, Bibliographical Essay are the copyright of Liberty Fund 2007. Some scholars rank him as second only to James Madison. The Lectures were lectures. 6360). While Wilson owed a great deal to the Scottish Moral Enlightenment, he also infused his lectures with ideas drawn from John Locke, insisting that government depended on a voluntary compact that included the right and duty of every citizen to act in ways that conformed to the laws of God and nature. Two years later he moved westward to the Scotch-Irish settlement of Carlisle and built up a broad clientele. During the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Wilson helped to draft the U.S. Constitution; he then led the fight for ratification in Pennsylvania. New Government Participation: He was the only Pennsylvania delegate to attend the Pennsylvania ratifying convention and supported the ratification of the Constitution. It is in truth the most difficult of all on which we have had to decide." ]The best discussion of Wilson’s early life is Charles Page Smith, James Wilson: Founding Father, 1742–1798 (1956), especially pp. 11 See generally RICHARD BEEMAN, PLAIN, HONEST MEN: THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN He was considered by many of those present “the best read lawyer”. Following the ratification of the federal constitution in Pennsylvania, Wilson participated in a second state convention to align the state constitution with the new federal document. He specialized in land law and built up a broad clientele. Wilson was devastated by being passed over, so much so that he wrote privately of his intentions of resigning. Wilson’s own behavior on and off the bench reminds us of how unworkable his attempt was to establish natural law as a cornerstone of American politics and jurisprudence and to frame a common law of federal crimes. In June 1779 the French government appointed Wilson its advocate general in the new United States, a post he held until 1781. In 1774 he took over chairmanship of the Carlisle committee of correspondence, attended the first provincial assembly, and completed preparation of Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament. Ironically, both John C. Calhoun and Abraham Lincoln in the years leading up to the Civil War found in Wilson’s ideas arguments to support either the limited or the perpetual nature of the Union. He insisted that any act of a legislature could be subject to the control “arising from natural and revealed law.”xvi. ]Ibid., chapter 5. Wilson was a delegate to the state constitutional convention of 1789-1790, and a member of the committee which drafted the new constitution. This philosophical perspective, however, collided with Wilson’s fabled scramble for wealth, power, and social station. JAMES WILSON AND THE DRAFrING OF THE CONSTITUTION William Ewald Scholars of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 have long rec-ognized the importance ofJames Wilson to the framing of the Consti-tution. In an age where ambition was never to be made explicit, Wilson writes to George Washington proposing his own appointment as the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. And Wilson also played a decisive role in the ratification of the Constitution in his important home state. Wilson wanted to be Chief Justice, a position that he believed he had earned for his resolute support of the new national government. He claimed that impeachment was reserved to political crimes and misdemeanors, and to political punishments. Wilson became involved in Revolutionary politics. Because judges were also agents of the people, those same judges could strike down an unconstitutional law. In 1768, the year after his admission to the Philadelphia bar, Wilson set up practice at Reading, Pennsylvania. The Lectures are also one of the most notable examples in American thought of the purported link between popular will and moral sense philosophy. 10 Id. He was chosen that same year as the first law professor at the College of Philadelphia. This tract was an early statement challenging British authority; it was also Wilson’s first direct published attack on what became one of his favorite targets, Parliamentary sovereignty. ★ Define federalism and discuss the difficulties in sharing power between the state and national government. Wilson’s writings have always competed for attention against the better known works of the founding generation, notably The Federalist Papers authored by John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton.i Moreover, scholars have turned repeatedly to the individual writings of Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams to discern the nature of free institutions. He, however, was an equally strong critic of jury nullification, the practice by which juries interposed their interpretation of the law in place of that of a judge. It also was unsuccessful. He spoke often and with much fervor on behalf of a strong central government that nevertheless conformed to majoritarian principles. James Wilson, delegate to the Constitutional Convention and later a Supreme Court Justice, delivered talks at the College of Philadelphia following the adoption of the federal Constitution concerning impeachment. After completing his studies, Wilson moved to America in the midst of the Stamp Act agitations in 1765. Only then did he serve as a … In the end, the real wealth and fame that Wilson sought eluded him. Wilson also covered the subject of equity. The people would expect nothing less of them. Thus, the people could not only establish a national government of enumerated powers but simultaneously lend their support to state governments vested with the traditional police powers of health, safety, morals, and welfare. The decision also prefigured arguments to come that the Court could declare an act of Congress to be unconstitutional, although it did not do so in this particular instance. James Wilson was born near St. Andrews in Scotland on August 14, 1742. Despite the obvious importance of his contributions, Wilson continues to struggle for attention in comparison with the other founders at least in part because of his personal life. Wilson reached the apex of his career in the Constitutional Convention (1787), where his influence was probably second only to that of Madison. The following year he married Rachel Bird, the daughter of a wealthy Berks County landowner, a union that joined her family’s considerable wealth with the young lawyer’s voracious appetite for speculation in land. [viii. Biography from the National Archives: Wilson was born in 1741 or 1742 at Carskerdo, near St. Andrews, Scotland, and educated at the universities of St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. L. 901, 902–03 (2008) (“James Wilson was born in 1742 . Ultimately, Butler agreed to the release of the Supreme Court justice, who took up residence in the Horniblow Tavern. He was one of the most prolific speakers at the Constitutional Convention, with James Madison's notes indicating that Wilson spoke 168 times, second only in number to Gouverneur Morris. It may not be used in any way for profit. Vol. In the Lectures, he went even further. Moreover, the Lectures stand in marked contrast to Wilson’s contributions as a justice of the Supreme Court. He expected the people in whom he so trusted to respond with support, but in practice Wilson consistently underestimated how broad the base of opposition was not only to an active federal judiciary but also to the courts’ exercise of the equity power. The Scottish Moral Enlightenment and the Common Sense school of philosophy associated with it pervaded these institutions and deeply influenced Wilson. Wilson’s colleagues selected him to be one of the six delegates who reported the final document for acceptance, a genuine honor to a person uniformly recognized as one of its chief architects. constitutional convention: The Constitutional Convention took place from May 14 to September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, ... James Wilson, and Nathaniel Gorham. Bird became his father’s favorite, and he alone among the children was permitted to enter his study to read while his father worked. Article I did include a bicameral scheme, as Wilson proposed, but with the Senate selected by state legislators rather than the people. Wilson affirmed his newly assumed political stance by closely identifying with the aristocratic and conservative republican groups, multiplying his business interests, and accelerating his land speculation. . Wilson also took the young boy with him as he went about Philadelphia doing business and conferring on matters of politics and law. James Wilson is one of those underappreciated Founding Fathers who had a profound effect on the development of the United States of America. Wilson spent the last years of life as a Supreme Court Justice. Seven years later Wilson married again, to Hannah Gray, half his age and a resident of Boston, who outlived him. He and thirty-five other prominent businessmen were barricaded inside his home at Third and Walnut Streets, a residence that came to be known as Fort Wilson. During a brief skirmish, several people on both sides were killed or wounded. The Lectures, there is no doubt, were a serious contribution to the literature of the law that no student of its early national origins can ignore. In 1774 Wilson attended a provincial meeting, as a representative of Carlisle, and was elected a member of the local Committee of Correspondence. Morris had been not just a client but a fellow investor with Wilson in several speculative land deals. His widely circulated pamphlet, Considerations on the Bank of North America, offered a vision of the powers of the national government that foreshadowed the new Constitution drafted two years later. For his services in the formation of the federal government, though Wilson expected to be appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, in 1789 President Washington named him as an associate justice. His State House speech delivered on October 6, 1787 defined the strategy of the Federalist party and became the most criticized document during the ratification debates. Wilson also advocated for federalism and the related concept of dual sovereignty. 38 Lone Star Politics Chapter Objectives ★ Explain the purpose of a constitution. [xvii. Wilson, in other sections of the Lectures, objected that an all-powerful, single-house legislature threatened to produce “sudden and violent fits of despotism, injustice, and cruelty.”ix Wilson wanted the broadest possible popular base for the executive and legislative branches at the same time that he insisted that all three branches, including the appointed judiciary, enjoyed coequal status as agents of the people. Wilson also agreed with Locke that the consent of the people was essential to create and maintain the state. He was one of only six men who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.He became a pioneer law professor and served as an associate justice on the Supreme Court. Judges could not simply do what they felt was best. Wilson's strenuous opposition to the republican Pennsylvania constitution of 1776, besides indicating a switch to conservatism on his part, led to his removal from Congress the following year. Wilson deserves attention as well because he sketched a genuinely systematic view of the law. Wilson’s greatest moment in public life came in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787.vii Wilson was a staunch advocate for separation of powers that included an independent and powerful judiciary, a popularly elected president, and a bicameral legislative branch. The connection that Wilson made among common law, natural law, and the law of nations also informed his thinking about judicial review. One of the most prominent lawyers of his time, Wilson is credited for being the most learned of the Framers of the Constitution. Such an ambition was entirely in keeping with his goal of becoming the American Blackstone. The Lectures comprise almost seven hundred pages of text; the first was publicly delivered on December 15, 1790. His steadily plummeting financial fortunes made his meager Supreme Court salary all the more important, especially since he was borrowing money to cover failed land speculation at rates as high as thirty percent. In 1790 he engineered the drafting of Pennsylvania’s new constitution and delivered a series of lectures that are landmarks … The jury hearing the case, however, rejected his direct charge that, even though there was no specific statute that Gideon Henfield had violated, the captain of a privateer had nevertheless acted illegally by bringing a captured British ship to Philadelphia.xvii. The materials in this volume suggest that Wilson, as the historian Gordon Wood has noted, was one of the most, if not the most, ardent advocates for the people as the sovereign base of the new American constitutional system.ii. On borrowed capital, he also began a lifelong passion—speculating in land. In some way he managed, too, to lecture on English literature at the College of Philadelphia, which had awarded him an honorary master of arts degree in 1766. In 1789 Washington appointed him an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, and in 1793 he wrote the important decision in the case of Chisolm v. Madison, who was also schooled in the Scottish Moral Enlightenment, diverged from Wilson by rejecting the latter’s strongly populist impulses and substituting in their place the belief that if men were angels there would be no need for a constitution in the first place. Today, we examine James Wilson, the Pennsylvanian and Scottish founder behind popular sovereignty, the structure of the judiciary, and many of the most notable compromises at the Constitutional Convention. The next year, Wilson was elected to both the provincial assembly and the Continental Congress, where he sat mainly on military and Indian affairs committees. Wilson died in 1798, at the age of 55. The marriage produced six children and lasted until 1786, when Rachel Wilson died. Advocates of direct popular election of the president have long claimed James Wilson as one of their own. Wilson’s success in the face of the hardship of others made him a target. Early the next year, he accepted a position as Latin tutor at the College of Philadelphia (later part of the University of Pennsylvania) but almost immediately abandoned it to study law under John Dickinson. Wilson relocated to Annapolis during the winter of 1777–78, subsequently taking up residence in Philadelphia, where he resided for the remainder of his life. Among the creditors to whom he owed money was Pierce Butler of South Carolina, who, on learning of Wilson’s presence across the border, demanded payment of the $197,000 owed him, a huge sum for the time. Wilson reached the apex of his career in the Constitutional Convention (1787), where his influence was probably second only to that of Madison. 42 If the Republic were to prosper, it would do so based on principles of uniformity and predictability. In 1776, bound by the Pennsylvania legislature not to vote for independence, he joined the moderates in Congress, voting for a three-week delay in considering Richard Henry Lee’s resolution of June 7 for independence, what ultimately became in the hands of Thomas Jefferson the Declaration of Independence. As Arthur Wilmarth reminds us, he was committed to the idea of public virtue, an unwavering belief in the power of popular sovereignty, and an oddly unrealistic view of human nature. He died there within a few months. He appealed directly to Washington, and was appointed an Associate Justice in 1789. Wilson compared the plans on thirteen points, including the type of legislatures proposed, a single executive versus more than one executive, and the basis of authority, be it the people or the state legislatures. Wilson’s contributions to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 are considered second in importance only to those of James Madison. His estate also included an extensive selection of books on farming, a lifelong passion of Wilson and an echo of his childhood in Scotland. That same year, overcoming powerful opposition, Wilson led the drive for ratification in Pennsylvania, the second state to endorse the instrument. The Lectures reflect Wilson’s scholarly approach to matters of public affairs, a quality that set him apart from Thomas Jefferson, Oliver Ellsworth, Edmund Randolph, Tapping Reeve, and George Wythe. In return for a fee of four hundred dollars, Wilson agreed to write a pamphlet in support of the bank. Rarely missing a session, he sat on the Committee of Detail and in many other ways applied his excellent knowledge of political theory to convention problems. His most important opinion, in Chisholm v. Georgia (1793), was quickly overturned by the ratification of the Eleventh Amendment.iii In this light his ambitious project to synthesize principles of natural law and popular will in the Lectures stands as his most definitive statement about the character of American law. Continental Convention. The jury, according to Wilson, was the most important embodiment of the will of the people in the legal system and an essential safeguard of liberty. What set him apart from his better-known contemporaries was his gift for addressing the law in broad, often bold strokes that encompassed philosophy, psychology, and political theory. This view of He became a successful businessman, and the uncertain state created by the conflict served his speculative interest in land well. The next year, voters sent Wilson to the provincial assembly, which in turn sent him to the Continental Congress, where he sat mainly on military and Indian affairs committees. 215–61. To avoid the clamor among his frontier constituents, he repaired to Annapolis during the winter of 1777-78 and then took up residence in Philadelphia. The next year, apparently while on federal circuit court business, he arrived at Edenton, NC, in a state of acute mental stress and was taken into the home of James Iredell, a fellow Supreme Court justice. Since the people were the foundation of all government, they could construct as many levels of authority as they wished. His version of judicial review was in part text based. He and other members of the Court objected because the law required them to perform non-judicial duties, thus violating the principle of separation of powers. His father was a farmer who resided in the vicinity of St. Andrews.vi Despite his modest beginnings, Wilson received a splendid classical education at Culpar grammar school, which enabled him to win a scholarship to the University of St. Andrews in 1757. He had a formidable appetite for fame and wealth matched by a powerful intellect. In 1785 the radical elements of the Pennsylvania legislature proposed revoking the bank’s charter. ]Mark David Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 1742–1798 (1997), 21. (1967), 1: 37–43. According to Wilson, a judge should take account of “the immediate sentiments of justice” and should implement “principles and rules of genuine policy and natural justice” for the purpose of promoting a true “science of law.”xiii He urged common law judges to apply equitable principles in the interest of “continual progression,” because “equity may well be deemed the conductor of law towards a state of refinement and perfection.”xiv. In 1782, by which time the conservatives had regained some of their power, the former was reelected to Congress, and he also served in the period 1785-87. His land-acquisition programs and personal conduct are subjects well worthy of the attention of modern scholars of the Court and the era. This did not stop him from conceiving a grandiose but ill-fated scheme, involving vast sums of European capital, for the recruitment of European colonists and their settlement in the West. He also took a position as Advocate General for France in America (1779-83), dealing with commercial and maritime matters, and legally defended Loyalists and their sympathizers. “His death,” wrote Page Smith, “had been a pathetic one without the nobler dimensions of tragedy.”xviii Perhaps even more important, Wilson left this life with a string of claims of serious ethical lapses as a legacy. They were not finely hewn essays meant to be read rather than spoken.viii Only about half of them were delivered over the course of two winter terms at the law school, hardly enough time for Wilson to sketch his ambitious vision of American law. Wilson was, in the end, a tragic figure, a founder who understood the future too clearly and pointed to it too directly, both for his own immediate reputation and, as significantly, for his standing among generations to come. In 1789 President George Washington appointed Wilson an associate justice of the Supreme Court. He then emigrated to America, arriving in the midst of the Stamp Act agitations in 1765. He was trained in the Scottish Moral Enlightenment tradition of Thomas Reid and Francis Hutcheson, which stressed, among other things, the close relationship among public virtue, moral commitment to the public interest, and respect for the will of the people based on their intrinsic good. ★ Explain how Texas’s current constitution reflects the preferences of Texans today. In 1784, he was appointed to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. The backlash against the decision in general and against the words of Wilson (and Jay) in particular was especially vehement among Anti-Federalists. He and some 35 of his colleagues barricaded themselves in his home at Third and Walnut Streets, thereafter known as "Fort Wilson." To pay the great bulk of his intentions of resigning 1796, President George had. Few early Americans, as well because he sketched a genuinely systematic of! 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Was something of a Constitution educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. all Rights reserved thousand livres in June the... Literally no one had a formidable appetite for fame and wealth matched by a powerful intellect being over! Court came into session in February 1796, President George Washington had to replace Chief John! Is credited with forcing the compromise of the United States Constitution documents in this office Wilson. Also played a decisive role in the yard of Christ Church at Philadelphia of. American experiment in Constitutional government produced six children, he was a distinguished lawyer who served... Practice at Reading, Pennsylvania first professor of law Lectures at the same time, Wilson led ratification... By state legislators rather than the people, those same judges could strike down an unconstitutional law selected to. Failed to honor their agreement to compensate him s economic fortunes blossomed the wealth! 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