Path to the Supreme Court
William Paterson was born in County Antrim, Ireland, on Christmas Eve 1745, the son of an Ulster Protestant tradesman. His family emigrated when he was two and settled in Princeton, New Jersey, where his father kept a general store. Conscious of his family's modest standing in a college town, he attended the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) on the strength of his abilities, read law under Richard Stockton, helped found the Cliosophic Society with Aaron Burr, and spent the next four decades becoming the dominant legal figure of New Jersey.
At the Constitutional Convention in 1787 he had his finest hour. The large states arrived with Madison's Virginia Plan: representation in both houses proportional to population. Paterson recognized what that meant for New Jersey and countered with the New Jersey Plan — equal representation for each state — and refused to yield before Madison, Wilson, and Gouverneur Morris. The deadlock produced the Great Compromise. Every small state's equal voice in the Senate traces directly to Paterson's refusal to back down in Philadelphia.
He signed the Constitution, became one of New Jersey's first senators, and helped draft the Judiciary Act of 1789 — the statute that created the federal court system. He resigned to become Governor of New Jersey. In 1793 Washington nominated him to the Court, then withdrew the nomination the same day — the Ineligibility Clause barred appointing a senator to an office created during his term. Washington waited one day for the term to expire, renominated him, and Paterson was confirmed the same day.
On the Supreme Court
On circuit Paterson proved one of the most active and consequential of the founding-era justices. He presided over the treason trials following the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794. He presided over prosecutions under the Sedition Act of 1798, sending Democratic-Republican editors to prison for criticizing President Adams — rulings that would haunt the Act's legacy and his own. His circuit opinions helped establish the nascent principle that federal courts could void state laws conflicting with the Constitution.
While traveling to seek medical treatment in 1806, he stopped at the Albany home of his daughter Cornelia — who had married Stephen Van Rensselaer, one of the wealthiest men in America — and died there on September 9, 1806. He was buried in the Van Rensselaer family vault, later reinterred in Albany Rural Cemetery. The city of Paterson, New Jersey, and William Paterson University bear his name.
The Voting Record
How Paterson voted in the 122 cases the Supreme Court Database records from the 1794 term through the 1806 term, using that database’s classification of each vote as liberal or conservative. The gold tick on each bar is the rate for the other justices sitting on those same cases.
Source · The Supreme Court Database (Spaeth, Epstein, Nelson, Martin, et al.) · how these figures are made
Key Decisions
Vanhorne's Lessee v. Dorrance (C.C.D. Pa.)
1795Holding · A state statute inconsistent with the state constitution is void; property may not be taken without just compensation.
Role · Paterson's circuit charge is one of the era's fullest statements of judicial review before Marbury.
A cornerstone of pre-Marbury judicial review doctrine and an early articulation of constitutional property protections.
Read the opinion →The Whiskey Rebellion treason trials (C.C.D. Pa.)
1795Holding · Convictions of rebels for levying war against the United States.
Role · Paterson presided, defining treason's scope in the young republic.
The first major test of federal criminal authority against armed resistance.
Read the opinion →Stuart v. Laird
1803Holding · Upheld Congress's repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801 and the justices' circuit-riding duties.
Role · Paterson wrote for the Court, six days after Marbury.
The quiet companion to Marbury — the Court's strategic retreat that preserved its independence during the Jeffersonian assault on the judiciary.
Read the opinion →Go Deeper
William Paterson: Lawyer and Statesman, 1745–1806 (1979, Rutgers University Press) by John E. O'Connor — the only full biography, now 45 years old. Strongest on Paterson's pre-Court career: the New Jersey practice, the Convention, and the New Jersey Plan debates. An essential starting point but overdue for a successor.
The Bookshelf
The standard full-length biography and the clear place to begin — from immigrant childhood and New Jersey legal practice through the Revolution, Convention, Senate, governorship, and Court. The only modern cradle-to-grave life, especially valuable for integrating political and legal history; its 1979 vintage makes Degnan and the documentary collections important companions. Rutgers University Press.
The best concise, Court-centered treatment. Degnan connects Paterson's defense of the smaller states at the Convention with his broader nationalism, his work on the Judiciary Act of 1789, and his judicial service — particularly strong on Van Horne's Lessee, Hylton, Calder, and circuit riding. Freely available in the open-access edition of Seriatim (NYU Press).
A focused archival study of Paterson's years as New Jersey's first attorney general — how public prosecution, private practice, wartime confiscation, and professional advancement overlapped in the Revolutionary state. Narrow, but it adds social and economic texture a statesman-centered biography can miss.
The indispensable printed collection for Paterson's work at Philadelphia: his own convention notes, the text and variants of the New Jersey Plan, and Madison's account of his speeches. The essential source for testing whether Paterson was merely a small-states defender or a nationalist working within a federal framework. Yale University Press.
The essential documentary collection for Paterson's first seven years on the bench: appointment records, Court minutes, circuit materials, grand-jury charges, and background for Van Horne's Lessee, Hylton, Calder, and the Whiskey Rebellion treason proceedings. The series ends in 1800, so it does not cover his entire tenure.
The only substantial modern study of Paterson's actual work as a justice — built on two draft opinions on the Sedition Act and the federal common law of crimes. Fills the gap the biographies leave: what the judge, as opposed to the framer, actually thought.
The standard modern biographical encyclopedia of the Court: a signed essay on each of the 110 justices from Jay to Alito, alphabetically arranged, by a named scholar or journalist. Length tracks reputation — two pages for Thomas Johnson, three for Woods, eleven for Holmes — which is itself a rough map of who the literature has bothered with. It is not a substitute for a biography, and for the justices who have never had one it is often the most careful short account in print. Borrow it free at the Internet Archive.
The one-volume reference on the Court: more than a thousand signed entries on cases, doctrines, institutions and the justices, current to 2005. Cases and people share one alphabet, so a citation can be followed without changing volumes, and the biographical entries are short, written by specialists, and better than a longer sketch at carrying the historiography — what the argument about a justice currently is. Borrow it free at the Internet Archive.
The Reading Path
A researched route through the literature — in order.
- 1.O'Connor — for the complete life and the best overall narrative of Paterson's public career
- 2.Degnan — for the clearest Court-centered account and the strongest analysis of Paterson as a constitutional jurist
- 3.Haskett — for the Revolutionary legal practice and the relationship between public office and private advancement
- 4.Farrand — for Paterson's convention notes, the New Jersey Plan, and the debates over representation and federal power
- 5.The Documentary History — for original records of his appointment, circuit work, major early cases, and grand-jury charges
- 6.The Paterson Papers (LOC) — for focused archival research and Paterson's surviving writings in manuscript
Where the Papers Are Kept
William Paterson papers, 1689–1898 — 611 items, 4 volumes: correspondence, legal papers, political essays, and the draft Laws of the State of New Jersey. Includes his pseudonymous newspaper essays ("Aurelius," "Horatius," "Hortensius," 1793–1797) — a largely unexploited primary source for his judicial-era thinking. Visit →
Personal and professional papers, including early correspondence, college writings, and Constitutional Convention material.
William Paterson papers, 1760–1806 — 125 items, including notes on the Convention and the New Jersey Plan. Visit →
Handwritten transcripts (made 1880) of correspondence on federal judiciary affairs, judicial opinions, and notes on Senate debates 1789–1790 (Bancroft collection).
Paterson papers and docket 1785–1788, plus his grandson's incomplete manuscript biography and transcriptions of letters to Aaron Burr. Visit →
Online Resources
Ideas for Further Research
- O'Connor's 1979 biography predates the modern renaissance in founding-era legal history and was written before the Rutgers and Princeton holdings were fully exploited. The modern treatment has not been written.
- The pseudonymous newspaper essays at Rutgers — written as Paterson moved from the governorship to the Court — remain largely unread by scholars. Whoever reads them first owns a genuinely new source on a framer's judicial-era thought.