WILSON, JAMES (1742-1798), American statesman and jurist, born in or near St. Andrews, Scotland, September 14, 1742. He matriculated at the University of St. Andrews in 1757 and was subsequently a student at the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh. In 1765 he emigrated to America. Landing at New York in June, he went to Philadelphia in the following year and in 1766-1767 was instructor of Latin in the college of Philadel phia, later the University of Pennsylvania. Meanwhile he studied law in the office of John Dickinson, was admitted to the bar in 1767, removed first to Reading and soon afterward to Carlisle, and rapidly rose to prominence. In August 1774 he published a pamphlet Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legis lative Authority of the British Parliament, in which he argued that parliament had no constitutional power to legislate for the colonies; this pamphlet strongly influenced members of the Con tinental Congress which met in September. Wilson was a dele gate to the Pennsylvania provincial convention in January 1775, and he sustained there the right of Massachusetts to resist the change in its charter, declaring that as the force which the British Government was exercising to compel obedience was "force un warranted by any act of parliament, unsupported by any principle of the common law, unauthorized by any commission from the crown," resistance was justified by "both the letter and the spirit of the British constitution"; he also, by his speech, led the colonies in shifting the burden of responsibility from parliament or the king's ministers to the king himself. In May 1775 Wilson became a member of the Continental Congress. He was in favour of the Declaration of Independence and a signer of that document. Re ceiving a commission as colonel in May 1775, Wilson raised a battalion of troops in his county of Cumberland, and for a short time in 1776 he took part in the New Jersey campaign, but his principal labours in 1776 and 1777 were in Congress. In May 1777 he wrote the address To the Inhabitants of the United States, urging their firm support of the cause of Independence ; he drafted the plan of treaty with France together with instructions for negotiating it; he was a member of the Board of War from its establishment in June 1776 until his retirement from Congress in September 1777; from January to September 1777 he was chair man of the Committee on Appeals to hear and determine appeals from the courts of admiralty in the several states; and he was a member of many other important committees. In September 1777 the political faction in his state which opposed Independence came into power, and Wilson was kept out of Congress until the close of the war; he was back again, however, in 1783, and 1785 1786, and, advocating a sound currency, laboured in co-operation.
with Robert Morris to direct the financial policy of the Confeder ation.
In 1779 he was commissioned advocate-general for France, and in this capacity he represented Louis XVI. in all claims arising out of the French alliance until the close of the war. In 1781-1782 he was the principal counsel for Pennsylvania in the dispute with Con necticut over possession of the Wyoming valley, which was de cided in favour of Pennsylvania in December 1782 by an arbi tration court appointed by Congress.
As a constructive statesman Wilson had no superior in the Federal Convention of 1787. He favoured the independence of the executive, legislative and judicial departments, the supremacy of the Federal Government over the State Governments, and the election of senators as well as representatives by the people, and was opposed to the election of the President or the judges by Con gress. His political philosophy was based upon implicit confidence in the people, and he strove for such provisions as he thought would best guarantee a government by the people. Together with Gouverneur Morris he wrote the final draft of the Constitution and afterwards pronounced it "the best form of government which has ever been offered to the world." In the Pennsylvania ratifica tion convention (November 21 to December 15, 1787) he was the constitution's principal defender.
Wilson was a delegate to the Pennsylvania state constitutional convention of 1789-1790, and a member of the committee which drafted the new constitution. 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 Chisholm v. Georgia, the purport of which was that the people of the United States constituted a sovereign nation and that the United States were not a mere confederacy of sovereign states. He continued to serve as associate justice until his death, near Edenton, North Carolina, on August 28, 1798.
Wilson's Works, consisting principally of his law lectures and a few speeches, were published under the direction of his son, Bird Wilson (3 vols., 1803-1804; rev. ed., with notes, 1896). See also Documentary History of the Constitution of the United States of America, vols. i. and iii. (Washington, 1894) ; J. B. McMaster and F. D. Stone, Pennsylvania and the Federal Con stitution, 1787-1788 (1888) ; L. H. Alexander (ed.), James Wilson (1908) ; A. C. McLaughlin, "James Wilson and the Constitution," Political Science Quarterly, vol. 12 (1897) ; Justice J. M. Harlan, "James Wilson and the Formation of the Constitution," in the American Law Review, vol, 34; B. A. Konkle et al., "The James Wilson Memorial," in the American Law Register, vol. 55 (19°7); R. C. Adams, "The Legal Theories of James Wilson," Univ. of Pa. Law Review, vol. 68 (192o).