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
