William Paterson

William Paterson
Born	24 12, 1745
Birthplace	County Antrim, Ireland
Died	Template:Death date and age Albany, New York, United States
Nationality	American
Occupation	Jurist, statesman, politician
Known for	New Jersey Plan, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Governor of New Jersey
Education	College of New Jersey (now Princeton University)
Spouse(s)	Cornelia Bell (m. 1779; d. 1783), Euphemia White (m. 1785)
Awards	Namesake of the city of Paterson, New Jersey; namesake of William Paterson University

William Paterson (December 24, 1745 – September 9, 1806) was an Irish-born American statesman, jurist, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1793 until his death in 1806, as the second Governor of New Jersey from 1790 to 1793, and as one of New Jersey's first United States Senators from 1789 to 1790. Perhaps most consequentially, Paterson was the principal author of the New Jersey Plan, presented at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which proposed equal representation for each state in the national legislature regardless of population — a concept that ultimately shaped the structure of the United States Senate. His contributions to early American governance, jurisprudence, and constitutional design left a lasting imprint on the political institutions of the republic. The city of Paterson, New Jersey, and William Paterson University both bear his name, reflecting the esteem in which he was held by contemporaries and subsequent generations. Over the course of a career that spanned the Revolution, the founding era, and the early republic, Paterson played a central role in debates over federalism, the balance of power between large and small states, and the authority of the federal judiciary.

Early Life

William Paterson was born on December 24, 1745, in County Antrim, in the province of Ulster, Ireland. He was the son of Richard Paterson, a tin-plate worker who emigrated with his family to the British colonies in North America when William was approximately two years old. The family initially settled in New Castle, Delaware, before relocating to Connecticut and eventually to Princeton, New Jersey, where Richard Paterson established himself as a manufacturer and merchant of tin goods. The elder Paterson's modest commercial success enabled him to provide his son with educational opportunities that were uncommon for immigrant families of their economic standing.

Growing up in the college town of Princeton, young William was exposed to an intellectual environment shaped by the presence of the College of New Jersey (later renamed Princeton University). The family's proximity to the college and Richard Paterson's ambitions for his son's advancement proved formative. William demonstrated academic aptitude from an early age and was encouraged to pursue higher education. The Paterson family's trajectory — from Ulster immigrants of humble means to participants in the colonial professional class — reflected broader patterns of social mobility among Scots-Irish settlers in the mid-Atlantic colonies during the eighteenth century.

Little is documented about Paterson's childhood beyond these broad outlines. The family's move through several colonies before settling in New Jersey suggests the peripatetic life common to many immigrant families seeking economic stability. By the time William reached adolescence, the family had established sufficient roots in Princeton for him to enter the College of New Jersey and begin the education that would propel him into public life.

Education

Paterson enrolled at the College of New Jersey in Princeton, one of the leading colonial institutions of higher learning. He earned his bachelor's degree in 1763 and subsequently pursued a master's degree, which he received in 1766. During his time at the college, Paterson studied under President Samuel Finley and later under the Reverend John Witherspoon, the Scottish-born clergyman and educator who would himself become a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Witherspoon's influence on a generation of American leaders — including Paterson, James Madison, and Aaron Burr — is well documented by historians of the founding era.

After completing his master's degree, Paterson read law under Richard Stockton, one of the most prominent attorneys in New Jersey and himself a future signer of the Declaration of Independence. Paterson was admitted to the bar in 1769 and began practicing law in various locations across New Jersey, initially struggling to build a clientele. He eventually established a practice in New Bromley, and later in Raritan, before the outbreak of the American Revolution drew him into public affairs.

Career

Revolutionary Era

The coming of the American Revolution transformed Paterson's career from that of a provincial attorney into a figure of political significance in New Jersey. As tensions between the colonies and Great Britain escalated in the early 1770s, Paterson aligned himself with the Patriot cause. In 1775, he was selected as a delegate to the New Jersey Provincial Congress, the extralegal body that assumed governmental authority in the colony as royal governance collapsed. He served as secretary of this body, a role that placed him at the center of New Jersey's revolutionary politics.

In 1776, Paterson played a role in drafting the first constitution of the state of New Jersey, one of the earliest state constitutions adopted during the Revolution. That same year, he was appointed Attorney General of New Jersey, a position he held from 1776 to 1783. As attorney general during the war years, Paterson was responsible for prosecuting loyalists and enforcing the laws of the new state government under extraordinarily difficult conditions, as New Jersey served as a major theater of military operations throughout the conflict. The state's location between the Continental Army's headquarters and the British stronghold of New York City made it a perpetual battleground, and maintaining civil authority required both legal acumen and political dexterity.

Paterson's service as attorney general earned him a reputation for competence and integrity that would undergird his subsequent political career. He prosecuted cases involving treason, property confiscation, and commercial disputes arising from the war, gaining experience with the intersection of law and governance that would prove invaluable at the Constitutional Convention.

The Constitutional Convention and the New Jersey Plan

Paterson's most significant contribution to American political history came at the Constitutional Convention, held in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787. He attended the convention as a delegate from New Jersey and emerged as the leading voice for the interests of the smaller states in the debates over the structure of the new national government.

The convention was dominated early on by the Virginia Plan, drafted primarily by James Madison and presented by Governor Edmund Randolph of Virginia. The Virginia Plan proposed a bicameral legislature in which representation in both chambers would be based on population, a scheme that would have given the larger states — Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts — disproportionate influence in the national government. For delegates from smaller states such as New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut, this proposal was unacceptable.

In response, Paterson introduced the New Jersey Plan on June 15, 1787. This alternative proposal called for a unicameral legislature in which each state would have equal representation, regardless of population — a principle carried over from the Articles of Confederation. The New Jersey Plan also proposed strengthening the national government's powers to tax and regulate commerce, but it preserved the fundamental equality of states that smaller states considered essential to their sovereignty and political survival.

The debate between the Virginia Plan and the New Jersey Plan constituted one of the central conflicts of the convention. Paterson argued forcefully that the larger states' insistence on proportional representation threatened to reduce the smaller states to political insignificance. He contended that the delegates had been sent to Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation, not to create an entirely new system of government, and that any new arrangement must respect the sovereign equality of the states.

The eventual resolution came in the form of the Connecticut Compromise (also known as the Great Compromise), brokered largely by Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut. This compromise established a bicameral legislature with proportional representation in the House of Representatives and equal representation for each state in the Senate. The structure of the United States Senate — with two senators per state regardless of population — directly reflected the principle for which Paterson had advocated. Paterson signed the completed Constitution on September 17, 1787, and subsequently worked for its ratification in New Jersey, which became the third state to ratify the document on December 18, 1787.

United States Senator

When the new federal government was established under the Constitution, Paterson was elected as one of New Jersey's first two United States Senators, taking office on March 4, 1789. During his brief tenure in the Senate, Paterson served on the committee that drafted the Judiciary Act of 1789, one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in American history. The Judiciary Act established the structure of the federal court system, including the creation of district courts and circuit courts, and defined the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary. Paterson's legal expertise and his experience as New Jersey's attorney general made him a natural contributor to this foundational statute.

Paterson's Senate service was cut short when he resigned on November 13, 1790, to assume the governorship of New Jersey.

Governor of New Jersey

Paterson served as the second Governor of New Jersey from 1790 to 1793. During his tenure, he oversaw efforts to modernize the state's legal code. One of his most notable accomplishments as governor was the codification and revision of New Jersey's laws. Working with legislative support, Paterson compiled the state's statutes into a comprehensive and organized body of law, a project that contemporaries recognized as a significant improvement in the administration of justice. This compilation, often referred to as the "Paterson Laws," brought order to a legal system that had accumulated a disorganized mass of colonial-era statutes, revolutionary-era legislation, and post-independence enactments.

It was also during Paterson's governorship that the city of Paterson, New Jersey, was founded in 1792. The city was established as the site of the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures (S.U.M.), a manufacturing venture conceived by Alexander Hamilton to promote American industrial development. Hamilton selected the Great Falls of the Passaic River as the location for this planned industrial city, and the new municipality was named in honor of the governor. The city of Paterson would grow into one of the leading industrial centers of the nineteenth century, and its association with Hamilton's vision for American manufacturing has given it enduring historical significance.

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court

On March 4, 1793, Paterson was nominated by President George Washington to serve as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was confirmed by the Senate and took his seat on the Court, where he would serve for the remaining thirteen years of his life.

Paterson's tenure on the Supreme Court coincided with a formative period in the development of American constitutional law. The Court during this era was still establishing its authority and defining its role within the federal system. Paterson participated in several cases of significance during the 1790s, a period marked by intense political conflict between Federalists and Democratic-Republicans.

One of the notable cases in which Paterson participated was Hylton v. United States (1796), in which the Court considered the constitutionality of a federal tax on carriages. The case was significant as one of the earliest instances in which the Supreme Court examined the constitutionality of an act of Congress. Paterson, along with his colleagues, upheld the tax, and the case contributed to early precedents regarding the Court's power of judicial review, a doctrine that would be more fully articulated in Marbury v. Madison (1803).

Paterson also presided over several trials conducted under the Sedition Act of 1798, the controversial statute that criminalized criticism of the federal government. His conduct in these cases has drawn criticism from some historians, who have noted that Paterson, a committed Federalist, was not always seen as impartial in his handling of prosecutions brought against Democratic-Republican editors and politicians. The Sedition Act trials remain one of the more contentious episodes in the early history of the federal judiciary.

As a circuit-riding justice — the Supreme Court justices of this era were required to travel and preside over cases in the federal circuit courts — Paterson covered extensive territory and heard a wide range of cases involving commercial law, property disputes, and federal criminal law. His circuit court opinions contributed to the developing body of American jurisprudence during a period when legal precedents were being established for the first time.

Paterson also played a role in the case of VanHorne's Lessee v. Dorrance (1795), a circuit court case in which he articulated an early and forceful defense of judicial review and the supremacy of the written constitution over legislative acts. In his charge to the jury, Paterson argued that the Constitution was the supreme law and that any legislative act contrary to it was void — a principle that anticipated Chief Justice John Marshall's more famous articulation of the doctrine in Marbury v. Madison eight years later.

Personal Life

Paterson married Cornelia Bell in 1779. The couple had three children together before Cornelia's death in 1783. In 1785, Paterson married Euphemia White, with whom he had no children. Euphemia was described by contemporaries as a woman of considerable social grace who supported Paterson's public career.

Paterson's health declined in the early 1800s. He suffered from injuries sustained in a carriage accident, and his condition worsened over the subsequent years. Despite his declining health, he continued to serve on the Supreme Court and to ride circuit as his duties required. By 1806, his health had deteriorated to the point where he could no longer fulfill his judicial responsibilities.

William Paterson died on September 9, 1806, in Albany, New York, at the age of sixty. He was buried at the Albany Rural Cemetery. At the time of his death, he had served on the Supreme Court for thirteen years and had been a participant in American public life for more than three decades.

Recognition

Paterson's contributions to American governance have been recognized through numerous namesakes and honors. The city of Paterson, New Jersey — founded in 1792 during his governorship — bears his name and became one of the most important industrial cities in American history. William Paterson University, a public institution located in Wayne, New Jersey, was originally established as the Paterson City Normal School in 1855 and was later renamed in his honor.

Paterson was among the signers of the United States Constitution, placing him in the select group of individuals recognized as Founding Fathers of the United States. His authorship of the New Jersey Plan has ensured his prominence in historical accounts of the Constitutional Convention, and the equal representation of states in the United States Senate remains the most enduring institutional legacy of his constitutional advocacy.

Several historical markers and memorials in New Jersey commemorate Paterson's life and career. His role in drafting the Judiciary Act of 1789 and his early articulation of the principle of judicial review have drawn attention from legal historians and constitutional scholars.

Legacy

William Paterson's legacy rests primarily on three contributions to American political and legal history: the New Jersey Plan, the Judiciary Act of 1789, and his early judicial articulation of the doctrine of constitutional supremacy.

The New Jersey Plan, though not adopted in its original form, fundamentally shaped the structure of the United States Congress. The Great Compromise that resolved the conflict between large and small states at the Constitutional Convention incorporated the principle of equal state representation that Paterson had championed. The resulting structure of the Senate — with two senators per state, regardless of population — has been one of the defining features of American federalism for more than two centuries. This arrangement has had profound consequences for American governance, affecting everything from the confirmation of judicial appointments to the passage of legislation.

Paterson's work on the Judiciary Act of 1789 contributed to the establishment of the federal court system that remains, in its basic structure, intact to the present day. The act's provisions regarding federal jurisdiction, the organization of circuit and district courts, and the relationship between federal and state courts have been described by legal scholars as foundational to the American legal system.

His circuit court opinion in VanHorne's Lessee v. Dorrance stands as one of the earliest and most articulate defenses of judicial review in American jurisprudence. While Chief Justice John Marshall's opinion in Marbury v. Madison (1803) is more commonly cited as the origin of this doctrine, Paterson's earlier articulation demonstrates that the principle was already gaining acceptance among federal judges in the 1790s.

Paterson's career as a whole illustrates the interconnected nature of law, politics, and governance in the founding era. He moved between roles as attorney general, constitutional framer, senator, governor, and Supreme Court justice, contributing to the construction of American institutions at nearly every level. While he lacks the popular recognition of figures such as Washington, Jefferson, or Madison, his contributions to the structural design of the American republic were substantial and enduring.