{"id":253,"date":"2019-06-09T22:35:45","date_gmt":"2019-06-10T02:35:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/?page_id=253"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:11:55","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:11:55","slug":"james-wilson-early-american-land-companies-and-the-original-meaning-of-ex-post-facto-law","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/in-print-2\/volume-17-number-1-winter-2019\/james-wilson-early-american-land-companies-and-the-original-meaning-of-ex-post-facto-law\/","title":{"rendered":"James Wilson, Early American Land Companies, and the Original Meaning of \u201cEx Post Facto Law\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Many commentators have questioned whether the interpretation of the term \u201cex post facto law\u201d in <em>Calder v. Bull<\/em>, which restricted that term to retroactive criminal laws, is historically accurate. Most prominently, over seventy years ago, Professor William Winslow Crosskey argued not only that this \u201ccriminal-only\u201d reading of \u201cex post facto law\u201d departed from the original understanding of the Constitution, but also that Justices Chase, Iredell, and Paterson adopted that erroneous interpretation in order to assist James Wilson, who by 1798 had fled from his creditors and needed retroactive bankruptcy protection. Drawing on new evidence related to legal disputes involving three land companies with which Wilson was associated, which eventually gave rise to <em>Hollingsworth v. Virginia<\/em>, <em>Fletcher v. Peck<\/em>, and <em>Johnson v. M\u2019Intosh<\/em>, this Article contends that Crosskey was likely correct about the original meaning of \u201cex post facto law,\u201d but likely mistaken about the Justices\u2019 motivations in Calder. In fact, Wilson\u2019s land speculation, conflicts of interest, and aggressive pursuit of his companies\u2019 interests were probably a source of embarrassment to his fellow Justices. Nonetheless, there is a clear discrepancy between the narrow construal of \u201cex post facto law\u201d in Calder and how that term was widely used in the founding era, which merits further investigation. A better historical understanding of these land disputes also raises new doubts about the reliability of the discussion of ex post facto laws in James Madison\u2019s <em>Notes of the Debates in the Federal Convention<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2019\/06\/17-1-Mikhail.pdf\">Keep Reading James Wilson, Early American Land Companies, and the Original Meaning of \u201cEx Post Facto Law\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many commentators have questioned whether the interpretation of the term \u201cex post facto law\u201d in Calder v. Bull, which restricted that term to retroactive criminal laws, is historically accurate. Most [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":0,"parent":232,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-253","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":292,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/253\/revisions\/292"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}