1742-1798 Supreme Court Justice

Man of Contradictions.

James Wilson was unloved by the people, who thought him a wealthy, antidemocratic aristocrat, yet as a framer of the Constitution he championed the rights of the common man. A preeminent legal scholar, he was three times passed over for appointment as chief justice of the Supreme Court. One of the best educated and most energetic men of his time, he spent his last years a debtor, hunted, in his words, "like a wild beast" by anxious creditors. James Wilson's life was filled with contradictions, but it was, above all else, a life devoted to the law and to the new American republic.

Early Years.

Wilson was the product of an era now known as the Scottish Enlightenment—a time when great original thinkers such as Adam Smith, David Hume, and Thomas Reid exercised enormous influence over the development...