James Wilson and Popular Sovereignty: Recovering the Democratic Foundations of the American Constitution

Recovering James Wilson’s Constitutional Vision

Few figures of the American founding exhibit a greater disparity between historical significance and public recognition than James Wilson. A signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, one of the Constitutional Convention’s most influential delegates, and an original Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Wilson nevertheless remains overshadowed by contemporaries such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Adams. Yet many of the constitutional principles most closely associated with the American political tradition—including popular sovereignty, representative government, and the direct relationship between citizens and the national government—owe much to Wilson’s political thought.[1]

Wilson’s relative obscurity is particularly striking given the breadth of his contributions. During the imperial crisis, his 1774 pamphlet Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament offered one of the most sophisticated constitutional arguments against parliamentary supremacy by grounding legitimate political authority in the consent of the governed rather than in inherited institutions or legislative power. During the Revolution, he served in the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence. At the Constitutional Convention, he emerged as one of the body’s leading architects of the new national government, shaping debates over representation, executive authority, and the relationship between the people and the federal union. As an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court and later as a lecturer on law, Wilson continued to develop a constitutional philosophy rooted in natural law, representative government, and popular sovereignty.[2]

Despite these accomplishments, Wilson has occupied a relatively modest place within the historiography of the American founding. Earlier scholarship understandably concentrated on founders whose writings or political careers dominated the early republic, particularly Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Washington. Wilson’s comparatively limited body of published political writings, his financial collapse during the final years of his life, and his early death all contributed to the gradual eclipse of his constitutional thought. Unlike Madison, whose ideas survived through The Federalist Papers, or Jefferson, whose presidency reinforced his public legacy, Wilson left no comparable body of political essays or enduring public office through which later generations might readily encounter his ideas.

During the past several decades historians have begun to restore Wilson to a more prominent place within the founding era. Mark David Hall has demonstrated the remarkable coherence of Wilson’s legal and political philosophy, William Ewald has emphasized his indispensable role at the Constitutional Convention, and Richard Beeman has highlighted his influence on debates concerning representation and executive authority. Bernard Bailyn likewise argued that Wilson’s State House Yard Speech may have exercised a greater immediate influence upon the ratification debates than The Federalist Papers. This scholarship has significantly expanded our understanding of Wilson’s constitutional contributions while demonstrating that his influence reached far beyond the specific offices he held.[3]

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Yet an important dimension of Wilson’s thought remains insufficiently explored. Although recent studies have restored Wilson as an influential participant in the founding, historians have generally emphasized his contributions as a delegate, jurist, and constitutional lawyer rather than examining the unifying principle that connected these roles. Wilson’s greatest contribution was his sustained effort to ground American constitutionalism in the sovereignty of the people themselves. Popular sovereignty was not merely one component of Wilson’s political philosophy; it was the principle that organized his understanding of legitimate government from the imperial crisis through the early republic.[4]

From his revolutionary challenge to parliamentary supremacy through his work at the Constitutional Convention, his defense of ratification, and his judicial opinions, Wilson advanced a remarkably consistent theory of government in which all legitimate political authority originated with the people. While James Madison is rightly remembered as the principal architect of the Constitution’s institutional framework, Wilson more consistently articulated the democratic principle upon which that framework rested. Recovering Wilson’s constitutional vision therefore enriches our understanding of the intellectual foundations of the American republic. It demonstrates that the Constitution was conceived not merely as an arrangement of governmental institutions but as a political order deriving its legitimacy from the sovereign people who created it. In restoring Wilson to the center of the founding era, we gain a fuller appreciation of both his constitutional thought and the democratic principles that continue to shape American constitutional government.[5]

The Revolutionary Origins of Wilson’s Political Thought

James Wilson’s constitutional philosophy did not emerge suddenly during the American Revolution. Rather, it developed from an intellectual tradition shaped by the Scottish Enlightenment, the English common law, and natural law philosophy. Educated at the University of St. Andrews and influenced by thinkers such as Francis Hutcheson and Thomas Reid, Wilson embraced the conviction that human beings possessed the capacity for moral judgment and that legitimate government rested upon principles discoverable through reason. These ideas would become the philosophical foundation of his understanding of popular sovereignty and constitutional government.[6]

After emigrating to Pennsylvania in 1765, Wilson quickly established himself as one of the colony’s leading attorneys and entered public life as tensions between Great Britain and its American colonies intensified. Like many colonial leaders, he rejected Parliament’s assertion of unlimited authority over the colonies. Wilson’s constitutional argument, however, differed in an important respect. Rather than simply protesting Parliament’s misuse of power, he questioned the source of that power itself. For Wilson, the central constitutional issue was not whether Parliament had exercised its authority wisely, but whether it possessed legitimate authority over a people who had never consented to its jurisdiction.[7]

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Wilson first articulated this argument in his influential 1774 pamphlet, Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament. Rejecting Parliament’s claim to absolute sovereignty, Wilson argued that no legislature could exercise legitimate authority over a people who had never delegated political power to it. Because the American colonists were neither represented in Parliament nor parties to its constitutional authority, parliamentary legislation extending beyond the regulation of imperial commerce lacked political legitimacy. In advancing this argument, Wilson challenged not merely individual parliamentary policies but the constitutional doctrine of parliamentary supremacy itself.[8]

This position represented a significant departure from earlier colonial constitutional thought. Writers such as John Dickinson continued to acknowledge Parliament’s limited constitutional authority while objecting to its abuse. Wilson instead shifted the debate to a more fundamental question: Where does legitimate political authority originate? His answer—that sovereignty resided in the people rather than in Parliament or any inherited political institution—anticipated one of the central principles of the American Revolution. By locating sovereignty in the people themselves, Wilson established the constitutional principle that would guide his thought throughout the Revolution and the founding era.[9]

Wilson’s revolutionary writings likewise reveal the close relationship between natural law and popular sovereignty. Government, he argued, existed to secure the natural rights of individuals and therefore derived its legitimacy only through their consent.[10] Political institutions were creations of the people rather than independent sources of authority. This understanding supplied the philosophical foundation for Wilson’s later advocacy of proportional representation, a stronger national government directly accountable to its citizens, and constitutional arrangements grounded in the sovereignty of the people.[11]

The significance of Considerations extends well beyond its immediate contribution to the imperial crisis. Wilson’s pamphlet introduced the central constitutional principle that united Wilson’s entire public career: legitimate government originates with the people and remains accountable to them. From his support for independence to his leadership at the Constitutional Convention, his defense of ratification, and his opinions as a Supreme Court justice, Wilson consistently returned to this idea. The constitutional debates of the 1770s therefore marked not only the beginning of the American Revolution but also the emergence of one of the founding era’s most coherent theories of popular sovereignty.[12]

Popular Sovereignty and Independence

James Wilson entered the Continental Congress in 1775 as one of the colonies’ most accomplished constitutional thinkers. Unlike many delegates whose support for independence evolved in response to Britain’s increasingly coercive policies, Wilson had already developed the constitutional principles that justified separation. His opposition to parliamentary authority rested not simply upon objections to taxation or imperial administration but upon the broader conviction that all legitimate government derived its authority from the consent of the governed. Independence, therefore, represented for Wilson not a break with his earlier constitutional thought but its logical consequence.[13]

Wilson’s constitutional philosophy shaped his measured approach to independence. Although he initially believed that formal separation should await broader public support within Pennsylvania, his caution reflected political prudence rather than constitutional uncertainty. Because Wilson regarded the people as the ultimate source of political authority, he believed that so consequential a decision required the clear assent of those whose sovereignty government existed to serve. Once Pennsylvania’s political leadership aligned with public sentiment, Wilson voted for independence on July 2, 1776, and signed the Declaration two days later. His vote represented the application of principles he had already articulated in Considerations, not the adoption of a new constitutional theory.[14]

The Declaration of Independence echoed many of the constitutional principles Wilson had advanced two years earlier. Its assertion that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed” reflected the same understanding of political legitimacy that Wilson had developed in his critique of parliamentary supremacy. Although Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration, Wilson had already argued that legitimate authority originated with the people themselves and that governments existed only by virtue of their consent. The Declaration thus transformed ideas Wilson had first expressed in constitutional argument into the political philosophy of an independent nation.[15]

Wilson’s contribution to the Revolution therefore extended beyond his vote for independence or his signature on the Declaration. He helped redefine the constitutional basis of political authority by locating sovereignty in the people rather than in Parliament or inherited political institutions. This understanding gave the American Revolution a constitutional coherence that extended beyond resistance to British rule. Independence was not merely the rejection of imperial authority; it was the affirmation that governments derive their legitimacy from the sovereign people who create them.[16]

This principle remained the organizing theme of Wilson’s public career. During the Constitutional Convention, the ratification debates, and his service on the Supreme Court, he consistently defended a national government that derived its authority directly from the American people.[17] The Revolution therefore marked not the culmination of Wilson’s constitutional philosophy but the first major application of a theory of popular sovereignty that would continue to shape his contributions to the American founding.[18]

James Wilson at the Constitutional Convention

When delegates assembled in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, James Wilson arrived not merely as an experienced statesman but as one of the nation’s most accomplished constitutional theorists. His experience as the author of Considerations, a delegate to the Continental Congress, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and one of Pennsylvania’s leading attorneys uniquely prepared him to influence the Convention’s deliberations. Unlike many delegates who focused primarily upon repairing the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, Wilson approached the Convention with a broader constitutional objective: constructing a national government whose authority rested directly upon the sovereign people.[19]

Wilson’s commitment to popular sovereignty shaped nearly every major constitutional debate. He consistently supported proportional representation in the national legislature, arguing that representatives should reflect the people rather than the states.[20] He also advocated the direct election of members of the House of Representatives, believing that frequent elections would preserve accountability between citizens and their government. Although the Convention ultimately adopted compromises that strengthened the role of the states within the federal system, Wilson consistently sought constitutional arrangements that maintained the closest possible relationship between the national government and the people themselves.[21]

Wilson likewise proposed a more democratic method of selecting the executive. He favored the direct election of the president because he believed the chief executive should derive authority from the people rather than from Congress or the state legislatures. Although the Convention ultimately rejected direct popular election in favor of the Electoral College, Wilson’s proposal reflected a broader constitutional principle rather than a preference for a particular electoral mechanism. Political institutions, he argued, derived their legitimacy from the people, and the executive should therefore remain as directly accountable to the citizenry as practical considerations permitted.[22]

Wilson’s understanding of executive authority likewise distinguished him from delegates who viewed a vigorous executive with deep suspicion. While mindful of the dangers associated with concentrated political power, Wilson believed that an energetic executive was compatible with republican liberty when constrained by constitutional limits and accountable to the people. His support for the separation of powers therefore reflected more than institutional design; it expressed his conviction that constitutional structure should preserve the people’s sovereignty by preventing any single branch from dominating the government they had created.[23]

Perhaps Wilson’s most enduring contribution to the Convention was his insistence that the Constitution established a government of the people rather than a compact among sovereign states. Throughout the debates he repeatedly argued that the federal government derived its authority directly from the American people. The states remained indispensable components of the federal system, but they were not the ultimate source of constitutional legitimacy. By distinguishing governmental powers from political sovereignty, Wilson helped articulate one of the Constitution’s defining principles and laid the intellectual foundation for his later defense of ratification and his opinion in Chisholm v. Georgia.[24]

Although James Wilson and James Madison shared a commitment to republican government and supported a stronger national union, they approached constitutional design from different intellectual perspectives. Madison’s political thought centered upon the problem of faction and the need for institutions capable of refining and enlarging public opinion. Wilson, by contrast, focused first upon the source of political legitimacy itself. Before constitutional institutions could effectively preserve liberty, they had to derive their authority from the sovereign people. Representation therefore served a dual purpose in Wilson’s thought: it enabled effective government while simultaneously expressing the people’s continuing authority over the constitutional order they had created. The differences between Wilson and Madison were thus differences of emphasis rather than opposition. Madison explained how republican institutions could preserve liberty; Wilson explained why those institutions possessed legitimate authority in the first place.[25]

Wilson’s influence at Philadelphia ultimately extended beyond the specific proposals he advanced or the compromises he accepted. He helped establish one of the Constitution’s defining principles: that the authority of the national government flowed directly from the people themselves. This commitment to popular sovereignty united his revolutionary writings, his work at the Convention, his defense of ratification, and his later judicial opinions into a remarkably coherent constitutional philosophy. Understanding Wilson in this way reveals that he was not simply one influential delegate among many, but the founding era’s clearest advocate of a Constitution grounded in the sovereignty of the American people.[26]

The People, Not the States: Ratification, Chisholm v. Georgia, and the Meaning of Sovereignty

The Constitutional Convention settled many questions of institutional design, but it did not resolve the deeper question of constitutional authority. During the ratification debates, James Wilson emerged as one of the Constitution’s most persuasive defenders because he explained not merely how the proposed government would function, but why it possessed legitimate authority. The answer, he insisted, lay in the sovereignty of the American people. The Constitution derived its legitimacy not from the states acting as independent political communities but from the people acting collectively in their sovereign capacity. This principle, first articulated in Considerations, remained the organizing theme of Wilson’s constitutional philosophy.[27]

Wilson presented this argument most fully in his State House Yard Speech of October 6, 1787, one of the most influential public addresses of the ratification campaign. Rejecting the claim that the Constitution represented only a compact among sovereign states, Wilson argued that both the federal and state governments derived their authority from the same source: the people themselves. Because the people had created both levels of government, sovereignty remained indivisible even as governmental powers were divided between national and state institutions. For Wilson, federalism divided governmental powers, not sovereignty itself; the people remained the single and enduring source of all constitutional authority.[28]

This distinction between sovereignty and governmental authority represented one of Wilson’s most important contributions to American constitutional thought. Anti-Federalists feared that strengthening the national government necessarily diminished the authority of the states. Wilson instead argued that the Constitution redistributed governmental responsibilities while leaving sovereignty untouched. The people remained the ultimate constitutional authority, and governments at every level exercised only those powers that the people had entrusted to them. By grounding both state and federal authority in the same sovereign people, Wilson offered a constitutional understanding of federalism that continues to influence American constitutional interpretation.[29]

Wilson reaffirmed these principles as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in Chisholm v. Georgia (1793). Writing for the majority, he declared that political authority under the Constitution originated with the people rather than with the states. The opinion did not introduce a new constitutional theory; it applied principles Wilson had defended consistently since the imperial crisis. Although the Eleventh Amendment soon limited the decision’s immediate legal effect, Chisholm remains one of the earliest and clearest judicial affirmations that the Constitution established a government deriving its authority directly from the American people.[30]

Viewed together, the State House Yard Speech and Chisholm v. Georgia reveal the remarkable continuity of Wilson’s constitutional thought. Across two decades of public service, he consistently articulated the same understanding of popular sovereignty, adapting it to the changing constitutional challenges of revolution, constitution-making, ratification, and judicial interpretation. His achievement lay not simply in defending the Constitution but in explaining the democratic principle upon which its legitimacy rested. By connecting constitutional authority to the sovereignty of the people, Wilson helped shape an understanding of American government that extended well beyond the founding generation and continues to inform constitutional interpretation today.[31]

Natural Law and Democratic Self-Government

James Wilson’s constitutional theory rested upon a philosophical foundation as well as a political one. His commitment to popular sovereignty was inseparable from his understanding of natural law and the Scottish Enlightenment. Unlike theories that justified political authority through inherited institutions, historical custom, or the unlimited power of government, Wilson maintained that legitimate authority originated in the moral equality of individuals created with the capacity for reason. Because human beings possessed the ability to distinguish justice from injustice, they also possessed the capacity—and the responsibility—to govern themselves.[32]

Wilson developed these ideas most fully in his Lectures on Law, where he argued that governments did not create rights but existed to secure rights that individuals possessed by nature. Political authority therefore rested upon consent rather than coercion, and governments exercised only those powers that the people had delegated to them. Natural law thus served as the standard by which all political institutions were judged. Wilson did not merely import Scottish moral philosophy into American constitutionalism; he adapted its principles to the practical demands of republican government and the common-law tradition, producing a constitutional theory that was at once philosophically grounded and institutionally practical. Constitutional legitimacy depended not upon tradition alone, but upon whether government faithfully protected the rights and liberties of the sovereign people.[33]

This understanding of natural law gave Wilson’s constitutional thought its distinctive character. He did not regard popular sovereignty simply as a procedural principle by which citizens selected representatives. Rather, he viewed self-government as a moral relationship between free citizens and the constitutional order they created together. Because individuals possessed the capacity for moral judgment, they were capable of participating responsibly in republican government. Representation therefore reflected more than political convenience; it expressed the people’s continuing authority over their government while encouraging civic responsibility and the pursuit of the common good.[34]

Wilson’s confidence in democratic self-government also distinguished him from several of his fellow founders. James Madison devoted much of his constitutional thought to designing institutions capable of moderating faction and limiting the effects of transient popular passions. Wilson did not deny those concerns, but he approached the question from a different starting point. Before constitutional institutions could preserve liberty, they first had to derive their authority from the people themselves. Institutional safeguards remained essential, yet they existed to preserve the sovereignty of the people rather than to replace it. This distinction helps explain why Wilson consistently emphasized legitimacy alongside constitutional structure throughout his public career.[35]

Natural law therefore provided the philosophical foundation for Wilson’s understanding of popular sovereignty. From Considerations through the Constitutional Convention, the ratification debates, Chisholm v. Georgia, and the Lectures on Law, Wilson advanced a remarkably consistent constitutional philosophy grounded in the belief that free government depended upon both the rights and the moral responsibilities of a self-governing people. His confidence in democratic government rested not upon optimism about human nature alone, but upon the conviction that political authority could remain legitimate only when it reflected the consent and moral agency of the citizens from whom it ultimately derived.[36]

Conclusion

James Wilson’s contributions to the American founding extend well beyond his service as a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and an original Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Across more than two decades of public life, he articulated a remarkably consistent constitutional philosophy grounded in the principle that legitimate political authority originates with the people. From Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament through the Constitutional Convention, the ratification debates, Chisholm v. Georgia, and the Lectures on Law, Wilson consistently maintained that governments possessed only those powers delegated to them by a sovereign citizenry.[37]

Recovering this continuity invites a reassessment of Wilson’s place within the intellectual history of the American founding. Historians have long recognized his importance as a constitutional delegate, jurist, and legal scholar, yet his broader constitutional philosophy has often remained overshadowed by the writings of James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and other leading founders. Wilson’s enduring significance lies not simply in the offices he held or the debates in which he participated, but in the coherence of the constitutional vision that united his public career. Popular sovereignty was not one principle among many within Wilson’s political thought; it was the foundation upon which his understanding of representation, federalism, constitutional legitimacy, and republican government ultimately rested.[38]

James Madison’s lasting contribution lay in explaining how constitutional institutions could preserve liberty by moderating faction and balancing political power. Wilson addressed a different, though equally fundamental, constitutional question: why those institutions possessed legitimate authority in the first place. By grounding constitutional government in the sovereignty of the people, Wilson supplied one of the clearest democratic justifications for the constitutional order established in 1787. The two founders therefore should be understood less as rivals than as complementary architects of the American constitutional system—Madison refining its institutional design, Wilson articulating the principle of legitimacy upon which that design depended.[39]

Seen in this light, James Wilson deserves recognition not merely as an influential participant in the founding, but as the founding era’s foremost theorist of popular sovereignty. His constitutional thought demonstrates that the American republic was conceived not simply as a framework of governmental institutions, but as a political order deriving its legitimacy from the sovereign people who created it. Recovering Wilson’s constitutional vision therefore does more than restore an overlooked founder to his proper place in American history. It enriches our understanding of the intellectual foundations of the Constitution itself and reminds us that the enduring strength of American constitutionalism rests upon the continuing sovereignty of the people from whom all legitimate government ultimately derives its authority.[40]

[1] Charles Page Smith, James Wilson: Founding Father, 1742–1798 (University of North Carolina Press, 1956), 62–95; Mark David Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 1742–1798 (University of Missouri Press, 1997), 1–12.

[2] James Wilson, “Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament,” in Collected Works of James Wilson, ed. Kermit L. Hall and Mark David Hall, 2 vols. (Liberty Fund, 2007), 1:3–34; Max Farrand, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, rev. ed., 4 vols. (Yale University Press, 1966); Wilson, Collected Works, 1:493–699.

[3] Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 1–12; William Ewald, “James Wilson and the Drafting of the Constitution,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review Vol. 156 No. 4 (2008): 901–1000; Richard Beeman, Plain Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution (Random House, 2009), 132–165; Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Harvard University Press, 1967), 328.

[4] Wilson, Collected Works, 1:3–34, 176–80, 361–62, 493–699; Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 58–74.

[5] Ewald, “James Wilson and the Drafting of the Constitution,” 904–61; Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 197–205; Beeman, Plain Honest Men, 132–165.

[6] Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 19–41; Smith, James Wilson: Founding Father, 21–25.

[7] Ewald, “James Wilson and the Drafting of the Constitution,” 904–5; Hall, Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 28–41.

[8] James Wilson, “Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament,” in Collected Works, 1:3–34.

[9] John Dickinson, “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania,” in Classics of American Political and Constitutional Thought, ed. Scott J. Hammond, Kevin R. Hardwick, and Howard L. Lubert (Hackett Publishing Company, 2007), 202; James Wilson, “Considerations,” 1:4–5.

[10] Wilson, Collected Works, 1:493–500; Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 58–68.

[11] Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 68–74.

[12] Wilson, “State House Yard Speech,” in Collected Works, 1:176–80; Wilson, Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 419 (1793), reprinted in Collected Works, 1:361–62; Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 197–205.

[13] Smith, James Wilson: Founding Father, 62–77; Ewald, “James Wilson and the Drafting of the Constitution,” 904–5.

[14] Richard Beeman, Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor: The Forging of American Independence, 1774–1776 (Basic Books, 2013), 345–82; Smith, James Wilson: Founding Father, 72–77.

[15] The Declaration of Independence (Philadelphia, PA, July 4, 1776); Wilson, “Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament,” in Collected Works, 1:3–34; Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 97–123.

[16] Wilson, “Considerations,” 1:3–34; Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 58–74.

[17] Wilson, “State House Yard Speech,” in Collected Works, 1:176–80; Wilson, Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 419 (1793), reprinted in Collected Works, 1:361–62.

[18] Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 197–205; Ewald, “James Wilson and the Drafting of the Constitution,” 950–61.

[19] Smith, James Wilson: Founding Father, 160–89; Ewald, “James Wilson and the Drafting of the Constitution,” 901–15.

[20] Max Farrand, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, rev. ed., 4 vols. (Yale University Press, 1966), 1:48–82.

[21] Beeman, Plain Honest Men, 135–44; Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 186–97.

[22] Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention, 2:29–57; Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 198–200.

[23] Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention, 1:64–68; Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 197–201.

[24] Wilson, “State House Yard Speech,” in Collected Works, 1:176–80; Wilson, Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 419 (1793), reprinted in Collected Works, 1:361–62.

[25] The Federalist No. 10, in The Federalist Papers, ed. Clinton Rossiter (Signet Classics, 2003), 77–84; The Federalist No. 51, in The Federalist Papers, 320–25; Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 197–205; Toward Democracy: The Struggle for Self-Rule in European and American Thought (Oxford University Press, 2016), 398–404.

[26] Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 197–205; Ewald, “James Wilson and the Drafting of the Constitution,” 950–61.

[27] Beeman, Plain Honest Men, 301–15; Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 197–205.

[28] Wilson, “State House Yard Speech,” in Collected Works, 1:176–80; Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 197–200.

[29] Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 198–201; Ewald, “James Wilson and the Drafting of the Constitution,” 950–61.

[30] Wilson, Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 419 (1793), reprinted in Collected Works, 1:361–62; U.S. Const. amend. XI.

[31] Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 197–205; Ewald, “James Wilson and the Drafting of the Constitution,” 950–61.

[32] Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 58–74; Wilson, Collected Works, 1:493–500.

[33] Wilson, Collected Works, 1:493–505; Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 68–74.

[34] Wilson, Collected Works, 1:500–506; Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 72–74.

[35] The Federalist No. 10, in The Federalist Papers, 77–84; The Federalist No. 51, in The Federalist Papers, 320–25; Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 197–205; Toward Democracy, 398–404.

[36] Wilson, “Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament,” in Collected Works, 1:3–34; Wilson, “State House Yard Speech,” in Collected Works, 1:176–80; Wilson, Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 419 (1793), reprinted in Collected Works, 1:361–62; Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 197–205.

[37] Wilson, “Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament,” in Collected Works, 1:3–34; Wilson, “State House Yard Speech,” in Collected Works, 1:176–80; Wilson, Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 419 (1793), reprinted in Collected Works, 1:361–62; James Wilson, Collected Works, 1:493–699.

[38] Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 197–205; Ewald, “James Wilson and the Drafting of the Constitution,” 950–61; Beeman, Plain Honest Men, 301–15.

[39] The Federalist No. 10, in The Federalist Papers, 77–84; The Federalist No. 51, in The Federalist Papers, 320–25; Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 197–205; Toward Democracy, 398–404.

[40] Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 203–5; Ewald, “James Wilson and the Drafting of the Constitution,” 950–61; Bailyn, The Ideological Origins, 328.