Justice William Paterson is, to date, the only justice to have been born in Ireland and is one of only six justices to have been born outside of the United States.
Paterson was born in December 1745 in County Antrim. In 1747, before he turned two, the family left for America and arrived in Delaware. His father sold tin goods throughout the colonies before opening a general store in Princeton in 1750, across the road from the soon-to-be-built Nassau Halltoday the oldest building at Princeton University (and which served as a battleground during the American Revolution). Aided by local real-estate purchases, Paterson’s father was able to fund his son’s education. Admitted to the College of New Jersey (today Princeton University) at 14, Paterson helped establish the Cliosophic Society with Aaron Burr, a “social and debating club” whose name he likely coined. After graduating in 1763 and earning a graduate degree three years later, he read law under Richard Stockton and was admitted to the bar in 1768.
After the American Revolution began, Paterson served as a delegate to and secretary of New Jersey’s provincial congresses, recording the state’s first official constitution in 1776, while also serving as an officer in the Somerset County Minutemen and on the Council of Safety, which organized New Jersey’s militia. As the state’s first attorney general from 1776 to 1783, Paterson “actively prosecuted Loyalists” while also maintaining a busy private practice. Tragically, his infant daughter died in June 1783 and his wife Cornelia passed away that November, four days after the birth of their son.
The Constitutional Convention proved Paterson’s “finest hour.” According to fellow delegate William PiercePaterson was “one of those kind of Men whose powers break in upon you, and create wonder and astonishment.” Championing the small states, Paterson introduced the New Jersey Plan (sometimes known as the Paterson Plan), proposing a one-chamber legislature where every state would vote as an equal. A week after the “Great Compromise” established equal state representation in the Senate – two members per state, protecting small states, to balance against another chamber with proportional representation – Paterson departed the Convention on July 23, leaving the drafting to others. He reappeared in September to sign the Constitution, becoming one of seven foreign-born signers.
Elected to the first Senate, Paterson drafted the Judiciary Act of 1789 alongside his old Princeton classmate (and future chief justice) Oliver Ellsworth, which set the initial number of justices on the Supreme Court at six. Indeed, the act’s first nine sections (which created the district and circuit courts, among other things) are in Paterson’s handwriting. Paterson then became the first person ever to resign from the Senate, trading his seat to become the second governor of New Jersey.
President George Washington nominated Paterson to the Supreme Court in 1793 but withdrew the nomination the next day over a procedural issue. Washington then renominated him on March 4 and he was confirmed that same day. (Washington later offered him the role of Secretary of State in 1795, which Paterson declined.)
One of Paterson’s most important statements came while riding circuit, in 1795’s Vanhorne’s Lessee v. Dorrancewhere his jury charge asked “What is a Constitution? It is the form of government, delineated by the mighty hand of the people.” He continued that “every act of the Legislature, repugnant to the Constitution, is absolutely void” – which Chief Justice John Marshall drew on in Marbury v. Madison. In 1796’s Hylton v. United StatesPaterson wrote that the carriage tax (a federal tax on carriages kept for the owner’s personal use, passed by Congress in 1794) was “indirect,” meaning it could stand under the Constitution. Two years later in Calder v. BullPaterson joined three colleagues in a unanimous judgment (only four justices heard the case and each wrote a seriatim opinion) confining ex post facto clauses – which prevent Congress and the states from passing laws that reach backward onto past conduct – to criminal laws only.
In 1803, Paterson was injured in a coach accident while riding circuit. Although the crash wasn’t fatal, it left him with health problems that never went away. Hoping a New York spa could help with his symptoms, he headed there in September 1806 but never arrived, dying en route at the Albany home of his daughter. Paterson was buried at his daughter’s husband’s manor. When the manor was destroyed around 1900, his remains were reinterred in Albany Rural Cemetery.
Source: www.scotusblog.com
