What was the New Jersey Plan?

The New Jersey Plan was an alternative proposal for the structure of the new national government, introduced by William Paterson of New Jersey on June 15, 1787 to counter the Virginia Plan and preserve the equal representation of states that small states like Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, and Connecticut depended on. The plan offered nine resolutions designed to retain the basic structure of the Articles of Confederation while adding limited new powers. It called for a unicameral legislature in which each state had a single vote regardless of population, the same arrangement as under the Articles. Congress would gain power to tax through stamp duties, postage, and import duties, and the power to regulate commerce.

A plural executive would be chosen by Congress, removable by Congress upon application by a majority of state governors, and would have power to enforce federal law. A federal judiciary appointed by the executive would hear cases involving federal officers and treaties. Federal laws and treaties would be the supreme law of the states.

Paterson designed the plan to address the most pressing weaknesses of the Articles, particularly the inability to tax and regulate trade, while preserving state equality and avoiding what small states feared as consolidation under a national government dominated by populous states. He argued that the convention's commission was to revise the Articles, not replace them, and that the people of the states had not authorized creation of a new framework. He also argued that small states would not surrender the equality they had enjoyed since 1781.

The convention rejected the New Jersey Plan on June 19, 1787 by a vote of seven states to three, with Maryland divided. James Madison, James Wilson, and Alexander Hamilton attacked the plan as inadequate to the country's problems. But the plan's introduction had served its purpose by demonstrating small state determination to resist proportional representation in any second chamber.

The Great Compromise of July 16, 1787, brokered by Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, drew on both plans by giving the House of Representatives proportional representation as the Virginia Plan proposed and the Senate equal state representation as the New Jersey Plan demanded. The compromise saved the convention. Other elements of the New Jersey Plan also survived into the Constitution. The supremacy clause in Article VI traces directly to the plan's language. The structure of an independent executive enforcing federal law, although changed substantially, drew on Paterson's design. The plan's lasting legacy was preserving small state equality in the Senate, which has shaped American politics ever since.