Wilson, James (b. Fifeshire, Scotland, 14 Sept. 1742; d. Edenton, N.C., 21 Aug. 1798; originally interred Hayes Plantation, Edenton, N.C., remains removed to Christ Church, Philadelphia, Pa., Nov. 1906), associate justice, 1789–1798. Born into humble circumstances in rural Scotland, James Wilson became a poignant example of the “lad o'parts”: after university study during the heyday of the eighteenth‐century Scottish Enlightenment, he emigrated to America, at age twenty‐three, and achieved fame and fortune, largely through his intellect and industry. In Pennsylvania and on the national scene, he became a noted lawyer, pamphleteer, politician, financier, and framer and theorist of American constitutionalism. Yet ultimately he failed to realize the promise of his talents and achievements; his tenure on the Court proved largely but the anticlimax of his public career.

After settling in Philadelphia in 1765, Wilson read law under John Dickinson, one of the best‐educated American lawyers of the day. Like Dickinson, Wilson made the legal profession a vehicle to political prominence. In 1767 he launched a successful law practice in western Pennsylvania; but by 1768 his aspiration to become a voice in American politics was already evident. In that year he composed (although he did not revise and publish it until 1774) his Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament, widely recognized as an important contribution to the pre‐Revolutionary pamphlet literature.

During the early 1770s, Wilson expanded his law practice and began his public career. In 1775 he was elected to the Second Continental Congress. Although not an early advocate of independence, he signed the Declaration, and during the Revolution and its aftermath he continued to make his way in national and Pennsylvania politics. Aligning himself with the leading conservatives in his home state, he was an inveterate critic both of the 1776 Pennsylvania constitution and of the Articles of Confederation. Having moved to Philadelphia in 1778, and become widely identified both as lawyer and investor with the interest of Robert Morris and the financial establishment there, Wilson produced in 1785 yet another important political pamphlet, his Considerations on the Bank of North America.

In that pamphlet, and otherwise as a delegate to Congress in the 1780s, Wilson promoted his strongly nationalist persuasion. His nationalism eventually brought him to the climax of his public career: his work in helping to frame and secure the federal Constitution. At the 1787 Convention, where he played a part second only to James Madison's, and during the ratification campaign he led in Pennsylvania, Wilson contributed at least as much as any other founder to promoting several of the signal features of American constitutionalism, especially the theory of the separation of powers, the importance of the presidency, and, above all, the fundamental significance of “the sovereignty of the People.” In 1790 he also successfully led a movement to replace the 1776 Pennsylvania constitution with a document that embodied his distinctive constitutional theory even more notably than the federal Constitution did. Wilson's most comprehensive exposition of his constitutional theory came in his Lectures on Law, composed for delivery during 1790–1791, upon his appointment as professor of law at the College of Philadelphia.

In 1789, on President George Washington's nomination, Wilson was also appointed an associate justice of the first Court. Although suggested by himself and others for the office of chief justice, he was passed over not only in 1789 but again in 1795 and 1796. Moreover, Wilson's cumulative accomplishments as associate justice fell short of fulfilling his earlier promise. His few written opinions were brief, except for his much‐remarked opinion in Chisholm v. Georgia (1793). There, in disposing of a state's claim of sovereign immunity from suit in the federal courts, Wilson elaborated a conception of popular sovereignty that, while grounded on leading principles of contemporary philosophical thought, was nevertheless out of tune with the politics of the times. Yet, in eschewing the legal positivism associated with Sir William Blackstone, and in exalting and interrelating the authority of national government and of popular democracy, Wilson's Chisholm opinion prefigured future American jurisprudence.

Increasingly during the 1790s Wilson became overextended in his investments and overwhelmed by financial distresses. Twice he was jailed for debt. Eventually, to escape creditors he went into hiding in North Carolina. Isolated and disgraced, he died there, a great legal mind and constitutional theorist arguably undone by the visionary tendencies that have distinguished his legacy as a founder.

Bibliography

Stephen A. Conrad , Metaphor and Imagination in James Wilson's Theory of Federal Union, Law & Social Inquiry 13 (1988): 1–70.
Stephen A. Conrad , James Wilson's ‘Assimilation of the Common‐Law Mind,’ Northwestern University Law Review 84 (1989): 186–219.
Robert Green McCloskey, ed., The Works of James Wilson, 2 vols. (1967).

Stephen A. Conrad

WILSON, JAMES

Lawyer, author, theorist, and justice, James Wilson helped write the U.S. Constitution and served as one of the first justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Wilson emigrated from Scotland in the mid 1760s, studied law, and quickly gained prominence and success in Philadelphia. As a Federalist, Wilson believed in strong central government. This theme pervaded the pamphlets he wrote in the 1770s and 1780s. These

highly influential tracts won him a national reputation. In 1787, he was a leading participant at the Constitutional Convention where the U.S. Constitution was written. Wilson served on the Supreme Court from 1789 to 1798, but the latter years of his life ended in disgrace.

Born on September 14, 1742, near St. Andrews, Scotland, Wilson came from a rural working class background. His quick intelligence took him far from his roots, however. He attended the University of St. Andrews from 1757 to 1759, the University of Glasgow from 1759 to 1763, and the University of Edinburgh from 1763 to 1765. At the age of twenty-three, he set out to make his fortune by emigrating to the American colonies, where he promptly began studying law under one of America's best lawyers, john dickinson. Two years later, in 1767, he was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar.

Over the next two decades, Wilson wrote political pamphlets that brought him national attention and launched his public career. In 1774 he argued that the American colonies should be free from the rule of British lawmakers in his widely read Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament. His writing soon led to involvement in the planning for American independence. He represented Pennsylvania at the continental congress from 1775 to 1776, and 1782 to 1783, and signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Wilson's most important role came at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, where he argued on behalf of key features of the Constitution such as the separation of powers, which divided federal government into three parts, and the sovereignty of the people. A year later he helped persuade Pennsylvania to adopt the Constitution.

In 1789 President george washington considered Wilson for the position of chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, a post Wilson desired but never attained. He became an associate justice, and, in the same year, was made the first law professor of the University of Pennsylvania. The few short opinions he wrote for the Court embodied his strong federalism. His most famous opinion was chisholm v. georgia, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 419, 1 L. Ed. 440 (1793), which upheld the right of citizens of one state to sue another state.

Despite the accomplishments of his early life, Wilson remained a minor figure on the

"Laws may be unjust … may be dangerous, may be destructive; and yet not be unconstitutional."
—James Wilson

Court. As a result of bad investments he became heavily in debt in the 1790s and was jailed twice before fleeing his creditors. He died on August 21, 1798, in Edenton, North Carolina.

further readings

Conrad, Stephen A. 1989. "James Wilson's 'Assimilation of the Common-Law Mind.'" Northwestern University Law Review 84 (fall).

——. 1984. "Polite Foundation: Citizenship and Common Sense in James Wilson's Republican Theory." Supreme Court Review (annual).

Delahanty, Mary T. 1969. The Integralist Philosophy of James Wilson. New York: Pageant Press.

Hills, Roderick M., Jr. 1989. "The Reconciliation of Law and Liberty in James Wilson." Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 12 (summer).

Smith, Page. 1973. James Wilson, Founding Father, 1742–1798. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.

Wilson, James. 2004. The Works of the Honourable James Wilson. Published Under the Direction of Bird Wilson. Union, N.J.: Lawbook Exchange.

James Wilson

James Wilson (1742-1798) was a patriot leader during the American Revolution and an influential delegate at the Federal Convention of 1787. He served on the first U.S. Supreme Court.

James Wilson was born on Sept. 14, 1742, on a farm in Fifeshire, Scotland. His family expected him to become a minister, and at 15 he entered St. Andrews University, but a family crisis interrupted his education. He took passage for America in 1765. In Philadelphia, Wilson turned to law studies; admitted to the bar in 1767, within six months he began practicing in Reading, Pa.

Wilson started his patriotic career in 1774 as head of the Carlisle Committee of Correspondence. In his pamphlet Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament (1774) he argued that the colonists, promoting genuine British constitutionalism, were being victimized by a corrupt ministry. He was sent to the Second Continental Congress in 1775. Wilson stood as a moderate but surrendered his early caution on July 2, 1776.

For the next decade, Wilson was mainly committed to the law and to his dream of vast wealth. He speculated in bank shares, land warrants, and similar ventures on borrowed capital. These involvements gave a misleading impression of great wealth, which in turn enabled Wilson to borrow more for speculations. In the Continental Congress he sought a national fiscal policy far sounder than that he personally practiced.

Wilson welcomed the Federal Convention call. He served on the Pennsylvania delegation, was on the powerful Committee of Detail, and was a persistent advocate for the direct election of both Congress and the president. His plan for an electoral college was ultimately accepted. His influence helped carry ratification of the Constitution in Pennsylvania in 1787.

With the establishment of the national government, Wilson vainly hoped to become chief justice of the Supreme Court but accepted an associate justiceship. On the Court he consistently favored the nationalistic position, and in Chisholm v. Georgia (1793) he insisted that states were as liable to a "controlling judiciary" as an individual citizen.

Wilson enjoyed the thrill of speculation but was ultimately unsuccessful at it. His health and his credit began to fail perceptibly. In the winter of 1796/1797, he took flight to escape imprisonment for debt. A defaulted $197,000 debt sent him to jail. He died at Edenton, N.C., on Aug. 21, 1798.

Further Reading

The Works of James Wilson, edited by Robert Green McCloskey (1967), contains a lengthy, thoughtful introduction and analysis of Wilson's main ideas. Selected Political Essays of James Wilson, edited by Randolph G. Adam (1930), also contains an assessment of Wilson's contribution to American political ideas. The best biography of Wilson is Charles Page Smith, James Wilson, Founding Father: 1742-1798 (1956).

Additional Sources

Seed, Geoffrey, James Wilson, Millwood, N.Y.: KTO Press, 1978. □

James Wilson 1742–98, American jurist, signer of the Declaration of Independence, b. near St. Andrews, Scotland. He studied at the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh and, after emigrating to Pennsylvania in 1766, taught Latin at the College of Philadelphia (now Univ. of Pennsylvania). He studied law there under John Dickinson, was later admitted to the bar in 1767, and became a successful lawyer within a few years. He was a member of the Pennsylvania convention (1774) and in the following year was elected a delegate to the Continental Congress. Although he strongly disputed Parliament's authority over the colonies, he opposed independence until July, 1776. Because he vigorously opposed the extremely democratic principles of the Pennsylvania constitution of 1776, he lost (1777) his seat in Congress. He became allied with the conservative faction and argued for it in the Congress of the Confederation (1782–83, 1785–87). Wilson is especially known for his part in the Federal Convention of 1787, where he was a proponent of a strong executive. His influence in drawing up the Constitution was second only to that of James Madison. He was active in drafting the Pennsylvania constitution of 1790 and served as associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1789–98). He was the first professor of law (1789) at the College of Philadelphia. Wilson wrote a number of pamphlets, addresses, treatises, and lectures on law.

Bibliography: See biography by C. P. Smith (1956, repr. 1973); the collection of his works, 2 vol., ed by R. G. McCloskey (1804, repr. 1967).

Wilson, James (1742–98), Scottish‐born jurist and political figure, emigrated to America (1765) and early entered the Revolutionary movement. His Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament (1774) contended that Parliament had no authority over the colonies, since they were separate states connected only by a common sovereign. Wilson was a delegate to the Continental Congress, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and a member of the Federal Constitutional Convention, where he worked for a strong national government. He later became conservative and framed a reactionary constitution for Pennsylvania. He was a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1789–98) and a professor of law at the College of Philadelphia. His Works was published in three volumes (1804).

James Wilson 1836–1920, American agriculturist and cabinet officer, b. Ayrshire, Scotland. He emigrated to the United States and settled (1851) in Connecticut, later moving (1855) to Tama co., Iowa, where he became a successful farmer. A member of the Republican party, he served in the state legislature (1867–73) and in the U.S. Congress (1873–77, 1883–85). Wilson was (1891–97) director of the agricultural experiment station and professor of agriculture at Iowa State (now Iowa State Univ. of Science and Technology). As Secretary of Agriculture (1897–1913) under Presidents William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft, he greatly expanded the services of the department; a number of experimental stations were set up over the country, and the aid of experts and scientists was enlisted.