Institute of Legal and Constitutional Research

James Wilson (1742 – 1798) was a Scottish-born  legal scholar, jurist, and statesman who served as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1789 to 1798. Born near Leven, Fife, Scotland, Wilson studied at the universities of St Andrews, Glasgow and Edinburgh before emigrating to Philadelphia in 1766 where he became a teacher at the College of Philadelphia. Wilson was a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, where he was a member of the Committee of Detail, which produced the first draft of the Constitution.