Federalist Papers Research Articles

Afterword

In 1941, Jacques Maritain mused about writing a variation on the Federalist papers, this time keyed not only to approval of the United States constitution but for the “entire world.” We could use such a document now, as democracies falter. Maritain, more than any other thinker, laid the groundwork for the Catholic Church’s endorsement of democracy. The task today, therefore, is to remember and also improve upon what Maritain once taught us.

Document Author Classification using Parsed Language Structure

Over the years there has been ongoing interest in detecting authorship of a text based on statistical properties of the text, such as by using occurrence rates of noncontextual words. In previous work, these techniques have been used, for example, to determine authorship of all of The Federalist Papers. Such methods may be useful in more modern times to detect fake or AI authorship. Progress in statistical natural language parsers introduces the possibility of using grammatical structure to detect authorship. In this paper we explore a new possibility for detecting authorship using grammatical structural information extracted using a statistical natural language parser. This paper provides a proof of concept, testing author classification based on grammatical structure on a set of “proof texts,” The Federalist Papers and Sanditon which have been as test cases in previous authorship detection studies. Several features extracted from the statistical natural language parser were explored: all sub trees of some depth from any level; rooted subtrees of some depth, part of speech, and part of speech by level in the parse tree. It was found to be helpful to project the features into a lower dimensional space. Statistical experiments on these documents demonstrate that information from a statistical parser can, in fact, assist in distinguishing authors.

U.S. Constitutional Originalism from Transcendence: The Founders’ Methodology

The characteristic that made the U.S. Constitution effective is the transcendence of the concepts it embodies. This essay seeks to define transcendence, its relationship to originalism in Constitutional interpretations, its historic origins, the consequences of rejecting them, and provide a truly originalist standard for Supreme Court decision-making. This transcendence has resulted in the U.S. being the only democracy since the Roman Republics to have been sustained over the long-term. Four specific areas are suggested by the Federalist Papers and many federal decisions over the last 50 years in the areas of civil rights, balance of power, public virtue, and judicial restraint. In civil rights, restoring the Constitutional diversity of this extended Republic would reverse the present “diversity, equity and inclusion” and its destructive policy. The recovery of the free exercise of religion from its “sincere personal belief” status would encourage a moral way of thinking and living by restoring Article I in the Bill of Rights to its proper status.

For Whom Should We Vote? Madison and the Wisdom, Patriotism, and Justice of the Federalist Papers

For Whom Should We Vote? Madison and the Wisdom, Patriotism, and Justice of the Federalist Papers

Rethinking shared rule as intergovernmental lobbying: a framework for analysis

ABSTRACT The recent literature has witnessed a booming scholarly interest in shared rule, a defining aspect of federalism. As a result, scholars have converged on an understanding that equates shared rule with intergovernmental lobbying: the attempt of subnational governments to influence upper-level decision-making. However, such a ‘stipulative definition’ is not directly applicable, leaving the empirical manifestations of shared rule contested. To address these conceptual and measurement shortcomings, this paper presents a comprehensive framework for analysis. Its four dimensions help to categorize different shared rule mechanisms; guided by straightforward ‘w’-questions. Furthermore, the framework incorporates empirical questions and measurement approaches borrowed from interest group and lobbying research—a major political science mainstream strand that also originates in the Federalist Papers. The article concludes with a research agenda outlining how the framework may inspire future investigations into the practice and effects of intergovernmental lobbying across time and space.

Loved It: The Boys of Summer

Loved It: The Boys of Summer Karen E. Kubara (bio) Roger Kahn aspired to be a writer. When the crunch came, he promised himself to write one book, his book, about the things and places and people he loved.1 That his subject was baseball is particularly American. Writers had been inspired by organized baseball almost from its beginning. The press box at the Polo Grounds circa 1907– 11 “could easily have been mistaken for an outdoor literary club,” sportswriter Bozeman Bulger once said.2 In The Boys of Summer Kahn is fan, reporter, and literary artist. His book is a classic. I call as my first witness Brett McKay of theartofmanliness.com. After studying the classics in college, McKay will tell you why every man should study classical culture. We know Kahn grew up immersed in the classics, at school and at home, which, to the dismay of some readers, comes through in his writing. McKay, his wife Kate, and their team have compiled a list: 100 Books Every Man Should Read over his lifetime, “a library that centers on books that expand mind and soul, build new mental models, allowing you to become more culturally literate and thus better able to participate in the ‘Great Conversation.’”3 (Lord knows we could use more cultural literacy out there.) Among the works of Jane Austen, Aristotle, and The Art of War by Sun Tzu; Don Quixote, Huckleberry Finn, and Herodotus; The Federalist Papers, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Orwell’s 1984, and Self-Control: Its Kinship and Majesty, you’ll find one sports book, Roger Kahn’s The Boys of Summer. This book is “inspiring enough to make a man hope for another shot on the diamond and join a local soft ball crew.”4 But it also addresses the “big ideas” that philosophers, theologians, and artists have mulled over for thousands of years: What is justice? What is true friendship? What is love? What is honor? How do you live a good life? In The Boys of Summer, not only does Kahn explore such questions, but also, as he brings out, does each man on the team. [End Page 1] The title was the spark. Kahn traces the idea for his book to the evening in 1952 when he heard Dylan Thomas “sonorously” recite in tones of surpassing beauty, “I see the boys of summer in their ruin . . .”5 Over the years ideas for the book evolved, but “baseball became [his] magic portal.”6 The boys of summer, the pleasant lilt of those five syllables, the soft vowels, the bucolic connotations are only part of the first line of the poem. Kahn quotes the complete line prominently on its own page following the table of contents. Clearly it resonated with him. If your eyes are rolling, “This is a baseball journal, lady,” you won’t be surprised that Kahn’s publishers balked at the title. It comes from a poem? Poetry doesn’t sell. “Safely, prosaically, dully,” Kahn’s editor wanted to call the book The Team.7 It took months of debate for Kahn to prevail. Why did he insist? “Is there one basic point to all fine poetry?” Kahn had asked Robert Frost. “The phrase . . . a clutch of words that gives you a clutch at the heart.”8 And that is why The Boys of Summer and not The Team became the title of Kahn’s book. The Team conjures naught, while The Boys of Summer is so loaded with color and suggestion it became a baseball meme, a synonym for ballplayers in their fleeting prime.9 In 1959 Kahn wrote an article about Babe Ruth for Esquire, in which he stated, “I set down the big man as he really was, with the booze, the babes, the insensitivity, the excess, as well as the howitzer homeruns.” Kahn was creating innovative sports journalism, he says, “hard- edged but not cruel . . . making a hero mortal but scarcely ordinary.”10 That article won the E. P. Dutton Prize for best sports magazine article of the year, reinforcing the approach, Kahn says, that was critical to The Boys of Summer. “In an era of hero worship,” Carl Erskine said, “Kahn...

Antonin Scalia and American Constitutionalism: The Historical Significance of a Judicial Icon

Edward A. Purcell's Antonin Scalia and American Constitutionalism is a comprehensive critique of U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia's constitutional decision making. Although Purcell occasionally overreaches, he presents a tightly organized, thoroughly researched, and often devastating case against his iconic subject. Purcell's thesis is easily summarized: Justice Scalia “regularly twisted, ignored, and abandoned his self-proclaimed methods and principles to reach the political, social, and ideological results he sought” (p. 294). In Purcell's account, Scalia's opinions on the separation of powers, federalism, racial issues, religion, property rights, gun rights, police searches, and other constitutional issues are best explained by Scalia's conservatism, not by his vaunted originalism—his view that provisions of the Constitution should be interpreted in accordance with the meaning that they carried when ratified. Purcell is most persuasive when scrutinizing Scalia's separation-of-powers opinions (those regarding the division of powers between the three branches of the federal government) and federalism opinions (on distributing power between the federal government and the states). He cogently contends that Scalia's opinions limiting congressional power to enable individuals to sue to enforce federal regulatory statutes and to impose duties on state officials to enforce federal law outright contradict historical evidence—including evidence from sources such as the Federalist Papers upon which Scalia relied in other opinions. Most of Purcell's critiques are similarly incisive and well supported. Another standout examination is his analysis of Scalia's affirmative action opinions. These opinions lack discussion of original meaning but closely track Scalia's personal opposition to affirmative action, which Purcell documents.

Irrelevant Scapegoat: The Perils of Doing European History in Post-Trump America

On 8 February 2022, an expert in Middle Eastern legal history – Florida State University associate professor Will Hanley – testified in front of Florida's House Education and Employment Committee. As a volunteer commentator rather than an invited speaker, Hanley was allotted just sixty seconds. But in his brief time, he did everything he could to argue against the adoption of the HB 7 ‘stop WOKE act’, which called for new educational protocols, especially regarding how race be taught in US classrooms.1 Hanley is not an Americanist; he does not teach on the subjects the HB 7 law affects, such as the Declaration of Independence, the US constitution, or the Federalist Papers. Nonetheless, this specialist on Islamic naming practices and Ottoman-Egyptian nationalisms stepped up and risked his career at a publicly funded institution because he knew that the reach of the US culture wars is much greater than American history, affecting all historians and all the students they teach – in the United States and beyond.2 In this essay, I want to explain why Hanley's actions should serve as a model for us all. To do this, I focus on how the US culture wars – as waged by both the right and the left – are triggering a global reconceptualisation of European history that will have dangerous consequences for students, researchers, teachers, and the profession at large. I start with Florida – the state where both Hanley and I work – because it is an extreme case of how the new culture wars have taken aim at history education, a template unfortunately being replicated with similar interventions in other US states.

Reconceptualizing American Democracy: The First Principles

An outstanding group of leaders left evidence that a richer and more sustainable democracy could be achieved with American independence and democratic principles integrated into a new republican form of government. They were moved by principles that are the very spirit of democracy. These principles are needed to enhance democracy and improve well-being. Using the constructivist tradition of grounded theory and Aristotle’s conception of abstraction, the article proposes a theory of the first principles of democracy based on substantive data: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, The Federalist Papers, and the United States Constitution. Knowledge, fairness, human dignity, hope, unity, and security are the first principles of democracy and are regarded as the bedrock of democracy and a government framework for the people. This theory contributed to a formal model of democratic social change. It also contributes a conceptual framework that supports Solum’s semantic originalism, a theory of constitutional interpretation. The principles of democracy can revitalize democracy and provide new possibilities by protecting education as an innate human right, abolishing capital punishment, criminalizing private prisons on the stock market, and reevaluating the proportionality of prison sentences.

The Essential Writings of Vannevar Bush edited by G. Pascal Zachary

<i>The Essential Writings of Vannevar Bush</i> edited by G. Pascal Zachary

Standing the Ground: The Crises of the 1790s and the Philosophies of the &lt;em&gt;Federalist Papers&lt;/em&gt;

The paper provides a unique outlook on the Federalist Papers, a series of eighty- five essays published in 1788, written by John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, as it examines the consistency of the philosophies and opinions presented in the Federalist Papers in light of the numerous crises the nation experienced in the 1790s. The paper compares the political belief presented in the Federalist Papers with the actions undertaken by authors during the Whiskey Tax’s enactment in 1791, the Genet Affair’s crisis of 1793, and the implementation of the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. Looking at these testing events that called the nation’s foundation into question, it became clear that the authors of the Federalist Papers’ philosophies and ideologies did not evolve in relation to their original arguments made within their essays, and they remained consistent with their political and philosophical beliefs as seen within their essays.

The Correlates and Characteristics of American State Identity

AbstractThe Federalist Papers highlight the role that citizens’ state identities will play in American federalism, yet some scholars argue that contemporary Americans have shed their state attachments. Drawing on data from a nationally representative survey, we demonstrate that individuals still hold dual national and state identities, and that the likelihood that one will feel attached to their state depends on a variety of individual characteristics such as education, identification with a marginalized or minority community within the state, and one’s ideological “fit” with the partisan majority in their state, leading to significant variance from one citizen to the next. Additionally, we find that this state identity is correlated with political attitudes, particularly trust in and assessment of state elected officials. Individuals who hold stronger state identities are also more likely to trust their state government. These findings have implications for our understanding of the dynamics of federalism in modern U.S. politics.

Radical Hamilton: Economic Lessons from a Misunderstood Founder

Parenti argues that Alexander Hamilton would support a “green reindustrialization” today on the basis of his discovery that Hamilton was an economic interventionist with “profoundly statist economic views” (237 [emphasis in the original], 2). All three claims are demonstrably false. A novel, nuanced, and empirically defensible view would hold that Hamilton sought to nudge the economy, not to manage it.Serious Hamilton scholars like Michael Newton understand that four types of Hamilton biographies exist. Two of them laud Hamilton, one because he augmented state power and one because he bolstered economic liberty; the two others deprecate Hamilton on the same grounds. Parenti’s book falls squarely into the pro-Hamilton, pro-statist camp made infamous by Clinton Rossiter in Alexander Hamilton and the Constitution (New York, 1964).This is Parenti’s fifth book; his earlier work concerns only contemporary carceral, environmental, and peace studies. Factual errors abound, including a reference to financier “Roger” Morris (68). More importantly, the book’s methodology cannot sustain the claim that Hamilton believed in dirigisme. No archival research went into the book: All cited sources are printed, and most are secondary, with a smattering of well-known printed primary references. Moreover, the cited secondary sources are often old, nonacademic, or New History of Capitalism titles discredited by economic historians. None of the major works that question the “good statist” view of Hamilton find their way into the narrative or notes: Forrest McDonald, Alexander Hamilton: A Biography (New York, 1982); Richard Sylla, Alexander Hamilton: The Illustrated Biography (New York, 2016); Sylla and David Cowen (eds.), Alexander Hamilton on Finance, Credit, and Debt (New York, 2018); and important studies of various aspects of Hamiltonian political economy by Brown, Edling, Flaumenhaft, Irwin, Michener, Nelson, Salsman, and this reviewer, among others.1Had he read more widely to develop his own understanding of economic context, Parenti may have realized that one cannot write a convincing intellectual history of a statesman’s thought without considering policy implementation. Texts, especially long, complex ones like the Constitution, The Federalist Papers, and the Report on Manufactures, can be interpreted in many ways, but only the one intended by the author(s) is correct. Authors sometimes comment on their own texts, but even better is when scholars can test their textual interpretations by observing real-world implementations of authorial intent. Parenti ignores or cursorily dismisses detailed, nuanced interpretations of Hamilton’s manufacturing report by economists who argue that Hamilton presented Congress with a didactic and theoretically sophisticated textbook of policy options rather than a blueprint for a national economy—“the means proper” assuming what economists call a “second best world.” Methodologically, however, Parenti should not have ignored that Hamilton never implemented a protective tariff or planned a federal system of internal improvements, and he urged testing America’s manufacturing capabilities with voluntary private, not public, investment.Like most Hamilton biographers, Parenti completely misses Hamilton’s role in the rapid development of America’s voluntary corporate sector. Hamilton not only championed open access to perpetual succession and the other benefits of incorporation, he literally led the way by forming banks through voluntary association rather than legislative charter. An economic planning dirigiste a la Parenti would instead have tried to maintain barriers to entry. Space precludes discussion of numerous additional examples of disconnects between Hamilton’s actions and claims about his beliefs based on naive textual analysis.Logical errors also abound in the book. Glibly claiming that “planning was not always planned” is argument by assertion (10). Arguing, contra Stephen Knott’s Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth (Lawrence, 2002), that protectionists like Friedrich List and Wakayama Norikazu found inspiration in Hamilton’s policies commits several logical fallacies. Parenti’s claim that planning sparks growth has long since been rejected by the institutional economics that Hamilton and the other Founders inspired.Those wishing to remain cloistered in the increasingly fanciful and self-referential New History of Capitalism will find Radical Hamilton reassuring: The Founder most adored at present was a statist and environmentalist who would eagerly embrace a Green New Deal, because Parenti says so. Scholars interested in Hamilton’s actual thoughts and deeds, however, should read the work of the scholars referenced above instead.

From the Federalist Papers to Hans Kelsen’s “Dearest Child”: The Genesis of the Austrian Constitutional Court

This article sketches in broad strokes the genesis of Austrian constitutional jurisdiction in the 1920 Federal Constitutional Act. Beginning with the Constitution of the United States, it provides a review of the long 19^th century, during which legislative review was controversial. It then elaborates which circumstances were decisive for the fact that immediately after the disintegration of the Danube Monarchy, two of its successor states simultaneously introduced the review of constitutionality. Finally, it discusses the impact of Hans Kelsen shaping the Austrian Constitutional Court as an institution more through his judicial activities than through his constitutional drafts.

Continental Originalism: Keeping Our Republic

Much ink has been spilled on originalism. This we all know. If we accept that originalism is not going anywhere anytime soon and we also accept its basic principles, we must then also take seriously the historical point—clearly revealed by the Federalist Papers—that baked into the original meaning of the Constitution is this idea of securing the nation’s survival and preserving our union. For all that has been written on originalism, the key theme of union preservation has been consistently overlooked. And when we do not talk about union preservation, we are not faithfully answering what the words of the Constitution meant when they were drafted. Making union preservation our lodestar can make originalism a little more faithful to the historical moment it holds sacred and thus add some legitimacy to judicial opinions at a time when we need it most. Plainly put, until we start taking the theme of union preservation seriously, we continue to risk our ability to keep our republic.

Rule by the Few in the Federalist Papers: An Examination of the Aristocratic Preference of Publius

Abstract The Federalist Papers are a set of eighty-five essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay during the founding era of the United States, with the purpose of persuading the states to adopt the Constitution as the replacement for the Articles of Confederation. The Papers were some of the most impressive political writings of the time, and are still cited frequently today by the United States Supreme Court. The arguments set forth in the Papers attempted to defend the Constitution's aristocratic characteristics against its opponents, the Anti-Federalists, while also attempting to normalize an anti-democratic, representative form of government in the minds of the American people. The clever advocacy and skillful rhetoric employed by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay led to the eventual ratification of the Constitution, and consequently the creation of the most powerful and prosperous nation on the planet. This paper examines the differences between the traditional forms of government, the political philosophies of the Papers’ authors, the anti-democratic, aristocratic nature of the government proposed by the Constitution, and the arguments for and against its adoption, as articulated in the Papers and various other writings.

Enriching feature engineering for short text samples by language time series analysis

In this case study, we are extending feature engineering approaches for short text samples by integrating techniques which have been introduced in the context of time series classification and signal processing. The general idea of the presented feature engineering approach is to tokenize the text samples under consideration and map each token to a number, which measures a specific property of the token. Consequently, each text sample becomes a language time series, which is generated from consecutively emitted tokens, and time is represented by the position of the respective token within the text sample. The resulting language time series can be characterised by collections of established time series feature extraction algorithms from time series analysis and signal processing. This approach maps each text sample (irrespective of its original length) to 3970 stylometric features, which can be analysed with standard statistical learning methodologies. The proposed feature engineering technique for short text data is applied to two different corpora: the Federalist Papers data set and the Spooky Books data set. We demonstrate that the extracted language time series features can be successfully combined with standard machine learning approaches for natural language processing and have the potential to improve the classification performance. Furthermore, the suggested feature engineering approach can be used for visualizing differences and commonalities of stylometric features. The presented framework models the systematic feature engineering based on approaches from time series classification and develops a statistical testing methodology for multi-classification problems.

Book Review | George Will’s Conservatism and Democracy in Crisis

Americans typically view the United States as a democracy and are rightly proud of that. Of course, as those of a more precise nature, along with smug college students enrolled in introductory American government classes, are quick to point out, the United States is technically a republic. This is a bit too clever by half since James Madison, in The Federalist Papers, defined a republic the way most people think of a democracy—a system of representative government with elections: “[The]… difference between a Democracy and a Republic are, first the delegation of the Government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest.” What the framers thought of as democracy is today referred to as direct democracy, the belief that citizens should have more direct control over governing. The Athenian assembly was what the framers, Madison in particular, saw as the paragon of direct democracy—and as quite dangerous. While direct democracy has its champions, most Americans equate democracy with electing officials to do the business of government.

Democracy, Faction and Diversity An Analysis of the Existential Ground of Democratic Republic Reflected in The Federalist Papers

Democracy, Faction and Diversity An Analysis of the Existential Ground of Democratic Republic Reflected in The Federalist Papers

INTRODUCTION TO TEACHING US POLITICS IN THE AGE OF TRUMP: INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

Introduction to PS Spotlight: Teaching US Politics in the Age of Trump: International Perspectives First paragraph: In recent semesters, beginning courses on US politics with a survey on questions that students want to address has yielded the same results. Before the 2016 election, students—in these cases, mostly of Swiss and German origins—were equally concerned about the causes and effects of party polarization, the “costs” of American democracy, and the influence of the media and lobbies. Although these questions are still at the center of many discussions, a resounding “why?” pervades the classroom whenever the Trump administration is mentioned. They ask, “Why could someone who has never held any public office and lacks a strong tie to any political party still be elected to the nation’s highest office while speaking and acting so divisively, and how has that impacted the American democracy?” At the end of the semester, students report that although they better understand how the US system works and why it now may favor polarizing candidates, they are not fully convinced that it can be effectively shielded from democratic erosion. Referencing Federalist Paper No. 51, students recognize that the system was designed to withstand the grasp of not particularly angelic executives; however, intention and reality may diverge.