Make 'em bobble!

The Annotated Bobblehead Justice James Wilson

We do not know what kind of robe Wilson wore on the bench, but his biographer reports he was "resplendent in the scarlet gown of St. Andrews" when he received an honorary degree from the College of Philadelphia in 1766.

Like Chief Justice John Jay, Justice Wilson is portrayed holding the second volume (2 Dallas) of the U.S. Reports. It contains his most famous opinion, the one in Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. 419 (1793)..

He was the first member of the Court appointed from Pennsylvania.

Justice James Wilson, 1789-1790

Like John Jay, James Wilson was a significant, if often overlooked, Founding Father. A signer of the Declaration of Independence, Wilson was elected to the Second Continental Congress and was an influential member of the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

Wilson's pamphlet, Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament (1774), included in his complete works (pictured below), is perhaps the earliest general examination of the grounds of British authority in the colonies.

Wilson helped to write the first draft of the U.S. Constitution, and is given credit for the treason clause (requiring two witnesses or a confession for a treason conviction), a view he developed while defending Loyalists in treason trials after the Revolutionary War.

A highly talented orator, politician and lawyer, Wilson also greatly shaped Pennsylvania's constitution of 1790, and was the College of Pennsylvania's first professor of law.