JAMES WILSON — NATION BUILDER
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James DeWitt Andrews, chairman of the American Bar Association's Committee on Classification of the Law, sums up Wilson's creative work under three heads :
decision in McCullough versus Maryland, Wilson had clearly enunciated the doctrine. On December 1, 1787, in one of his speeches in defense of the Constitution, he declared:
"I. Contributions to Jurisprudence Proper: He stated the true theory of jurisprudence, and enunicated the American conception of Law and Right. He showed the necessity for a system of legal education, and presented an outline or juristic encyclopaedia. "II. Contributions to International Law: His conceptions of the Law of Nature and of the Law of Nations are just and modern; his divisions of the subject correct and sci entific. His views on the exercise of Remon strance now obtain, as do his views on Inter vention, on Mediation and on Arbitration. "III. Contributions to Constitutional Law: He published to the world the principles of the Declaration twenty-three months prior to July 4, 1776, and asserted the uncon stitutionality of acts of Parliament over the American Colonies. He affirmed that the Colonies, by their union, formed a nation, and was the first to expound the doctrine of inherent national power. He maintained that a charter is a contract, and also that a legislative grant constitutes a contract. He expressly upheld the doctrine of national expansion. He declared the right of the federal government to incorporate national banks and asserted its power to make paper money a legal tender. "WTilson thus anticipated the most impor tant measures of the Government and the most important decisions of the National Supreme Court."
"Under this constitution, the legislature may be restrained and kept within its prescribed bounds by the interposition of the judicial department. This I hope, Sir, to explain clearly and satisfactorily. I had occasion on a former day to state that the power of the constitution was paramount to the power of the legislature acting under that constituton. For it is possible that the legislature, when acting in that capacity, may transgress the bounds assigned to it, and an act may pass in the usual mode not withstanding that transgression; but when it comes to be discussed before the judges, when they consider its principles, and find it to be incompatible with the superior powers of the constitution, it is their duty to pronounce it void; and judges independent, and not obliged to look to every session for a continuance of their salaries, will behave with intrepidity and refuse to the act the sanction of judicial authority. " 1
But the end is not yet. That profound student of our history, John Bach McMaster, declares : "I believe Wilson to be the most learned lawyer of his time. As a statesman, he was ahead of his generation in foresight. .fany of the great principles of government advocated by him, we, as a nation, are only beginning to apply." We should never forget that every great decision by John Marshall was foreshadowed by James Wilson, the nation-builder. Fif teen years before Marshall wrote the opinion in Marbury versus Madison declaring a law repugnant to the Constitution to be void, and thirty years before his equally potent
Did space permit, it would be profitable to quote at length Wrilson's profound eluci dation of the principles of republican government, but to do so would require many scores of pages. He was determined that the American people should have a Constitution which would be a true trans cript of their national life and place them before the world a nation, and not a mere confederacy of jarring states. He stood against the idea of sovereignty in the states and declared that the sovereignty was solely in the people. The real battle must have been fought in that little "Com mittee of Detail," composed of five members, which drafted the Constitution into concrete form. The changing of a few words here and there would have altered the funda mental principles upon which our nation now exists. He had his convictions, he saw the situation as it existed, and with prophetic vision he also saw the future, ■— he knew what the Constitution ought to be, 1 " Commentaries on the Constitution" (English Edition), p. 12.
