Sovereignty and Separation: John Taylor of Caroline and the Division of Powers
Noah C. Zimmermann* | 25.6 | Citation: Noah C. Zimmermann, Sovereignty and Separation: John Taylor of Caroline and the Division of Powers, 25 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 1532 (2023).
Few figures in American history have faded farther from renown to obscurity than John Taylor of Caroline. John Taylor was not only a widely respected United States Senator and leading member of Thomas Jefferson’s Republican party, but he was also, in the opinion of British political scientist M.J.C. Vile, “the most impressive political theorist that America has produced.” An Antifederalist lawyer and farmer, Taylor made such thoughtful contributions to the development of the Republican party and the philosophy of states’ rights that American constitutional scholar and historian Kevin R. C. Gutzman identified him as “Virginia’s favorite thinker” over the course of the Revolutionary period to the antebellum era. Taylor wrote profusely over the course of his life, devoting most of his attention to expounding the meaning of the American Revolution, the substance of the Constitution, and the principles of the American polity. But despite consensus “[a]mong specialists in the field of American intellectual history and political thought” that Taylor “deserves the status of a major thinker,” Taylor is little known by most audiences today. And even though historians, political scientists, and legal scholars “have often agreed that Taylor was important, they have seldom agreed why.” This Comment highlights one aspect of Taylor’s thought that warrants particular attention because of its relevance to modern discussions of federalism, separation of powers, and states’ rights in hopes of bringing Taylor’s work into the light it merits.
***
* Executive Editor, Vol. 25, University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law.