When one thinks of the Constitution’s framers, Gouverneur Morris is rarely the first to come to mind. In many ways, however, Morris was the quintessential lawyer—one whose drafting contributions to the Constitution far outpaced his personal fame.

Known as “the Penman of the Constitution,” Gouverneur Morris shaped the Constitution’s meaning through his drafting choices at the Constitutional Convention. In contrast to his relative obscurity, Morris’ revisions have had a lasting impact on the law, including informing key decisions on judicial review, federal supremacy, and the relationship between state and federal power.

Early Life

Gouverneur Morris was born on January 31, 1752 and raised in Morrisania, New York. Morris graduated with a bachelor’s degree at age 16, went on to earn a master’s degree, and later studied law and passed the bar exam to become a lawyer in 1775. Morris was appointed as a New York delegate to the Continental Congress in January 1778. While there, Morris served on the committee tasked with funding the Continental Army. On the committee, Morris became a vocal Federalist, contending that a strong central government was needed to win the Revolutionary War. 

Constitutional Convention

Among Morris’ most enduring legacies is as a drafter at the Constitutional Convention. In 1787, Morris was Pennsylvania’s delegate to the Convention. Morris served on the Committee of Style and Arrangement, where he acted as chief drafter of the final document. Morris’ drafting choices were not merely stylistic—they influenced how the Constitution would be interpreted. 

Morris supported a strong central government with three co-equal branches and helped refine the three-branch structure in Articles I, II, and III. He revised the Constitution’s preamble from “We the People of the States” to “We, the People of the United States,” a change that informed early judicial decisions reinforcing federal supremacy. Justice James Wilson, for example, cited the Morris-drafted preamble in the 1793 decision Chisholm v. Georgia to support the exercise of federal jurisdiction over the state of Georgia.

Morris advocated for a strong executive, stating that “we must either renounce the blessings of the Union, or provide an Executive with sufficient vigor to pervade every part of it.” Reflecting this belief, Morris added the qualifier “herein granted” to the Legislative Vesting Clause, but not to the Executive Vesting Clause. That distinction in verbiage has been cited in cases such as Myers v. United States and Zivotofsky v. Kerry, and by proponents of the unitary executive theory, to support arguments that the president possesses broad executive authority. 

Morris also supported federal supremacy in law and judicial review. Morris changed the Law of the Land Clause from “the Constitution shall be the supreme law of the several states” to “the supreme law of the land.” In Hayburn’s Case, two Justices cited the Morris-drafted language in support of exercising judicial review over congressional action.

In addition to shaping the Constitution’s federalist structure, Morris influenced the text of other core provisions. For example, Morris deleted the word “private” from the Contracts Clause, expanding the potential reach of the clause to encompass both private and public contracts. In Fletcher v. Peck, the Supreme Court cited the Morris-drafted language in applying the Contracts Clause to a public land grant contract. 

Morris was also one of the Constitutional Convention’s most vehement opponents of slavery, which he described as a “nefarious” institution that “tears away his fellow creatures from their dearest connections & dam(n)s them to the most cruel bondages.” Reflecting these views, Morris deleted the word “justly” from the original draft of the Fugitive Slave Clause, a revision cited in early abolitionist debates. Morris also revised the New States Clause in an attempt (although ultimately unsuccessful) to preclude the establishment of new slave states split off from existing ones.

Life After the Convention

After the Constitution’s ratification, Morris traveled to France where he worked as a merchant, and eventually served as the U.S.’s Plenipotentiary to France during the French Revolution. In 1798, Morris returned to the United States and served as senator for New York from 1800-1803. Morris died on November 6, 1816 at his family estate in Morrisania, New York. 

As a key drafter of the Constitution, Morris helped cement the nation’s federalist form of government and shaped the Constitution’s text with reverberations on both legal and moral debate for centuries to come. The consummate lawyer, Morris’ story illustrates how seemingly small textual and structural changes in a document can have an outsized impact on the law—and even a nation.

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Editor’s note: Adam K. Magid is a member of the Board of Editors of the Federal Bar Council Quarterly. Dylan Ceballos is a law clerk at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP.

1.  Sources: Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., The Trials of Phillis Wheatley, America’s First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers, Basic Civitas Books, 2003; Baker, James G., Phillis Wheatley: Poet Laureate of the American Revolution, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Summer 2021. 

2. Annabel LaBrecque, Gouverneur Morris, Geo. Wash’s Mount Vernon., https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/gouverneur-morris, (last visited Mar. 26, 2026).

3. William Michael Treanor, Gouverneur Morris and the Drafting of the Federalist Constitution, 21 Geo. J. L. & Pub. Pol’y 1, 19, 17 (2023).

4. Jack Heyburn, Gouverneur Morris and James Wilson at the Constitutional Convention, 20 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 169, 192 (2017).

5. William B. Allen & Jonathan Gienapp, Morris, Constitutional Convention Speeches (1787), Nat’l Const. Ctr., https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-document-library/detail/gouverneur-morris-constitutional-convention-speeches-july-5-and-11-and-august-8-1787, (last visited Mar. 26, 2026).

6. Gouverneur Morris was the half-brother of Lewis Morris, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. For further discussion of Lewis Morris, see New York State of Mind by Larry H. Krantz, later in this issue.