PDF Summary:The Federalist Papers, by Alexander Hamilton

The Federalist Papers are a unique window into the minds of the men who drafted the Constitution and founded the United States. This series of 85 essays, originally published at the time of the raging debate over ratification, make the case for a stronger national government and urge the adoption of the Constitution. This is one of the most important documents in American history, revealing what the Founding Fathers thought about human nature, civil society, and the relationship between government and liberty.

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• National defense
• Taxation
• Overseeing interstate commerce

A core principle held by the Framers of the new Constitution was that it wasn’t enough to merely grant powers to the federal government on paper. The new government needed to have the authority to make laws and enforce provisions that would enable it to effectively exert those powers.

Standing Armies and the National Defense

The most important purpose of any government is to secure peace and protect its people from internal and external threats. Accordingly, the federal government under the Constitution would have the power to raise and equip a standing army—the only way the US could survive in the face of threats from European powers.

Standing armies under the Constitution would not become agents of tyranny because they could only be raised by the legislative—not the executive—branch. Thus, the people’s representatives (the legislative branch) would retain control and prevent the creation of a permanent military establishment.

The Power of Direct Taxation

The management of public finances is another core function of any government. Under the Articles, the federal government only had a few direct revenue streams, like taxes on imported goods. This left the government unable to meet basic fiscal obligations and led to rising costs in the financing of the national debt and a collapse in public confidence. Because it acted directly on individuals, not states, the new Constitution gave the government powers of direct taxation. Thus, it could directly assess taxes on land and people, without relying on the states as intermediaries.

Giving the federal government the power of direct taxation would also be good for the broader economy. If the federal government had to rely solely on customs duties and excise taxes (taxes paid by manufacturers and incorporated into the final price of the product paid by consumers) for its revenue, it would have to tax these items at an extraordinary rate. Giving the federal government a broad tax base would encourage modest tax rates, which would be good for both producers and consumers.

Interstate Commerce

The Constitution greatly simplified the economic relationships between the states by granting the federal government the sole authority to unilaterally impose tariffs and duties on imports. Thus, states could no longer (without the consent of Congress) put tariffs on imports from other states.

To further stimulate interstate commerce, Congress was also given the sole authority to coin money and issue paper notes of legal tender, establish post roads, set uniform standards of weights and measures, further rationalizing and harmonizing trade between the states, and create national rules for naturalization.

The Necessary and Proper and Supremacy Clauses

The Necessary and Proper Clause of the Constitution states that Congress has the power to enact all “necessary and proper” laws to enforce the powers it is granted. Some critics of the Constitution alleged that this language gave Congress a blank check to pass any laws it wished. But these objections were rooted in a misunderstanding of the purposes of drafting a Constitution in the first place—it would have been nonsensical to create a plan for a government and assign to it specific powers without giving it the means to enforce those powers.

The Supremacy Clause made federal law the supreme law of the land—superseding state law (and requiring even state officials to swear an oath of allegiance to the Constitution). A national government that was unable to exercise supremacy over its constituent members was not a national government at all; it was merely a voluntary treaty or association, vulnerable to dissolution by any of the parties to it.

The Role of the States

The new government balanced the priorities of national government (a central government with the necessary authority to act directly on the people) and federal government (a system in which the central government shares powers with subordinate government).

Indeed, the states would play a key role. The Senate would be elected by the state legislatures. And in assigning every state equal representation in the Senate regardless of population, the Constitution preserved a key federal feature of the old Articles of Confederation. The Electoral College, meanwhile, guaranteed that the president would not be chosen in a national election that treated the states as non-entities. The states were the elemental unit in the Electoral College, with each state receiving electoral votes equal to its combined number of representatives and senators.

Thus, the states did not just passively accept their status under the Constitution; they would play an active role in shaping the nature of the Union itself.

Structure of the New Constitution

Having outlined the general principles of the new Constitution, we can now look at the structure of the federal government itself, exploring:

• How the Constitution separated power within the federal government between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches;
• How the system of checks and balances was designed to keep any of the branches from growing too powerful at the expense of the other branches; and
• The specific powers and functions of each of the branches and their constituent parts, examining how they’re elected and what their responsibilities are.

Separation of Powers

All constitutional forms of government have three branches:

• The legislative branch, which writes the laws;
• The executive branch, which enforces the laws; and
• The judicial branch, which interprets the laws.

A basic principle of republicanism is that the executive, legislative, and judicial functions must remain separate. Critics of the new Constitution argued that its provisions for the separation of powers were too weak and that the result would be a corrupt despotism.

But instead of striving for complete separation of powers (which was an impossibility), it was far more important to imbue the Constitution with the principle of checks and balances.

The new Constitution was well-designed with a robust system of checks and balances to ensure that the branches remained coequal, that none reigned supreme over the others, and that each had the means to hold the others in check.

The House of Representatives

There are few eligibility requirements for election to the House. A member merely needs to:

• Be age 25 or older
• Be a resident of the state they represent
• Have been a citizen for at least seven years prior to their election
• Hold no other office during their tenure in the chamber

Beyond these requirements, anyone is eligible to run and serve (although the House retains the right to expel members by a two-thirds vote). Members of the House were to be directly elected to two-year terms by the voters of the state, with voters meeting the same eligibility requirements that they did for state legislative elections.

Because apportionment in the House was to be determined by state population, the larger states would naturally hold sway.

It was to have sole authority to impeach members of the executive branch, including the president, for high crimes and misdemeanors—a crucial check on executive power.

The Senate

The Senate is the upper chamber of the national legislature. Unlike the House, its members must be 30 years of age and have been citizens of the United States for nine years prior to their election. Thus, senators would tend to be older, more experienced, and have greater familiarity with the laws and customs of the United States than their counterparts in the House.

Senators were to serve six-year terms and be elected by the state legislatures—not by the people themselves. Each state was to have two senators, regardless of population. Naturally, the Senate conferred an advantage on smaller states, who received disproportional representation in the upper chamber relative to their actual number of voters.

The Senate was designed to temper the more dangerous democratic impulses of the House. This was because its members were fewer, they were not elected directly by the people, and their terms in office would be longer. This would prevent them from being susceptible to democratic political pressures.

(Shortform note: The system of having state legislatures elect senators had become rife with corruption by the late-19th century, with scandalous incidents of Senate seats being openly bought and sold. Moreover, the political polarization of the time had frequently resulted in state legislatures failing to come to agreement on elections to the Senate. This resulted in many Senate seats going unfilled, leaving states without representation in the upper chamber of Congress. The Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1913, finally ended senatorial election by state legislatures, mandating instead that senators be directly elected by the voters of their states.)

The Senate, as the upper chamber, was designated with certain special privileges. One of the most important of these was its sole prerogative, via a two-thirds vote, to ratify treaties negotiated and submitted to it by the President. The Senate would also be responsible for approving all cabinet appointments submitted by the president. These were both powerful checks on the executive branch.

Another, arguably more important check on the power of the executive branch was the Senate’s sole authority to convict members of the executive (including the president) for high crimes and misdemeanors by a two-thirds vote, following impeachment in the House.

The Presidency

The presidency, the chief executive of the federal government, was perhaps the most controversial and hotly contested feature of the Constitution. The president would have the power to:

• Veto bills passed by both houses of Congress, thus serving as an important check on legislative power;
• Propose legislation;
• Negotiate treaties;
• Nominate executive officials and federal judges;
• Make temporary appointments when Congress was not in session;
• Adjourn Congress when it could not agree on a time of adjournment;
• Issue pardons, except in cases of impeachment; and
• Direct and oversee the armed forces as commander-in-chief

Anti-Federalist critics argued that these powers rendered the office tantamount to a monarch. But, in reality, the office’s authority was heavily restricted by the provisions of the Constitution. The president’s veto could be overridden by a two-thirds majority vote in each house of Congress; treaties and executive appointments required Senate approval; he could not pardon offenders who’d been impeached; and he could not declare war or raise funds for an army without Congress.

The Judiciary

The third branch of government, the judiciary, is unique. Unlike the executive branch, it possesses no army, navy, or other powers of enforcement to compel adherence to its decisions. Unlike the legislature, it has no direct power of the purse.

Instead, the way that the federal courts exercise this power is through judicial review. This is the power of the courts to declare null and void those laws or executive orders that are in violation of the Constitution. Judicial review serves as a powerful check on both the executive and legislative branches. While courts generally do not have many formal powers to enforce their rulings, Congress and the president have historically complied with court orders, even when they disagreed with them.

Given its crucial function, and judges’ comparative lack of enforcement power, it was important that the judiciary be independent from the executive and legislative branches. To ensure this, judges were to serve for life, provided that they maintained “good behavior” on the bench. There were good reasons for this. Judges were meant to make their rulings solely on the Constitution, not for political considerations. If they had to be renominated and re-confirmed, they might feel the need to curry favor with Congress and the president, which could exert a corrupting influence on their jurisprudence.

The highest court in the land was to be the United States Supreme Court. In the main, the Supreme Court acted as an appellate court—issuing final rulings (for those cases it chose to hear) on cases that had worked their way through the inferior federal courts. The only cases where the Supreme Court would have original jurisdiction would be cases involving ambassadors or cases in which a state was a party to a suit.

No Bill of Rights?

One of the primary objections to the Constitution was that it contained no bill of rights. The Federalist Papers, however, argued that a Bill of Rights was entirely unnecessary. The Constitution already guaranteed the liberties that such a bill would plausibly contain:

• Trial by jury in criminal cases;
• A prohibition on bills of attainder (a law passed by a legislature declaring a specific individual guilty of some crime without due process) and ex post facto laws (a law that makes an act illegal or increases the punishment for it after the accused has committed it);
• A guarantee of habeas corpus (the requirement that a person under arrest be brought before a judge) except in cases where the country was under attack or insurrection
• A prohibition against the conferral of any titles of nobility; and
• A guarantee that impeachment could only result in removal from office

Conclusion

In short, The Federalist Papers outline a plan of government that promised to be far superior to the Articles of Confederation. The new Constitution aimed to create a stronger bond between the states, lay the foundation for national prosperity, establish a strong national defense, create a more efficient and energetic national administration, and safeguard the liberties of the states and the people.

Inevitably, future generations of Americans would see the need to update the Constitution to meet new challenges. The Framers could not anticipate what these needs and challenges would be, but they created a process by which the Constitution could be amended.

But The Federalist Papers cautioned against hasty changes. It was prudent, instead, to let the merits of the new plan of government reveal themselves over time. Time and experience would prove the wisdom and effectiveness of the new, supreme law of the land.