James Wilson

James Wilson lived from September 14, 1742 to August 21, 1798 and was a Scottish American Founding Father, legal scholar, jurist and statesman who served as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1789 to 1798. He was elected twice to the Continental Congress and was a signatory of the Declaration of Independence, and in 1787 he was a major participant in drafting the United States Constitution, becoming one of only six people to sign both documents. He was one of the first four Associate Justices appointed to the Supreme Court by George Washington, and as the first professor of law at the College of Philadelphia he taught the first course on the new Constitution to President Washington and his Cabinet in 1789 and 1790. Born near Leven, Fife, Scotland, Wilson immigrated to Philadelphia in 1766, studied law under John Dickinson, and set up legal practice in Reading, Pennsylvania. He was a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, where he was a member of the Committee of Detail that produced the first draft of the Constitution, was the principal architect of the executive branch, and along with Roger Sherman and Charles Pinckney proposed the Three-Fifths Compromise. He experienced financial ruin in the Panic of 1796 to 1797 and was sent to debtors prison twice, and in August 1798 he suffered a stroke, becoming the first United States Supreme Court justice to die.