Vital Statistics

Biography

James Wilson was a legal scholar of the first rank and one of the intellectual giants at the Constitutional Convention. A signer of the Declaration of Independence, Wilson was a tireless advocate for a government founded on the sovereignty of the people. He was a key architect of the presidency and the judiciary, and his arguments for a single, powerful executive were instrumental. Later, as one of the original justices of the Supreme Court, he continued to shape the legal interpretation of the very document he had helped to write.