Composition and purpose
The Federalist Papers were eighty-five essays written by Madison, Jay, and Hamilton, described by Bob Zadek as “basically op-ed pieces.” They were written in New York in order to persuade New York to vote for ratification of the Constitution, and the first of them was published on the day Zadek’s episode aired in 1788. Zadek notes that they are often cited as evidence of what the founders meant when they wrote the Constitution, a citation he considers misplaced: the essays were written to persuade, not to educate. He reports that the daily blog of the National Constitution Center identified the Federalist Papers as essentially a public relations campaign, and advises taking them with a grain of salt—not legislative history, but articles of persuasion. Robert Alt of the Buckeye Institute: Power to the States (2017)
The essays belong to the ratification fight that followed the drafting of the Constitution, when, as Zadek put it, the country broke down into two factions: the Federalists, who supported the newly drafted Constitution, and the Anti-Federalists, who opposed it. Zadek notes in passing that Rhode Island did not participate in the ratification battle. [[episodes/crossroads_for_liberty__with_william_watkins_jr|Crossroads for Liberty with William Watkins Jr. (2017)]]
The Federalist Papers as a source of meaning
Frank H. Buckley ranks the Framers’ own debates above the Federalist Papers as reading on the structure of liberty. He calls the delegates “the most brilliant people,” not merely brilliant but possessed of a political sense and practical reason that a mere theoretician would not have, and adds, “Thank God they were not academics.” Their debates, in his view, are the most fascinating set of readings on the structure of liberty and “can’t be beat anywhere else, not even the Federalist Papers.” Has America Become an “Elective Monarchy”? (2014)
Zadek supplements this with the provenance of the debates themselves: James Madison, whom he describes as the man most instrumental and certainly very influential though not the “Father of the Constitution” as most Americans believe, reconstructed the debates each night in his room from memory and from notes, often verbatim, though he was not the secretary of the Constitutional Convention. Madison kept that book secret for many years so the country would not be affected by the debates, and much later in his life they were released to the public, becoming one of the crucial source documents for understanding what happened at the convention. Has America Become an “Elective Monarchy”? (2014)
The Anti-Federalist tally
William Watkins Jr. treats the Federalist Papers as one side of a scoreboard. His method is to go through the Constitution, through the Federalist Papers, and through the promises the Federalists made about how the Constitution would be limited—how certain clauses would confer no really new powers on the national government but only invigorate already existing powers—and then to compare those promises with the Anti-Federalists’ predictions of what the provisions would actually do. Running that tally, he concludes it is clear that the Anti-Federalists were correct. [[episodes/crossroads_for_liberty__with_william_watkins_jr|Crossroads for Liberty with William Watkins Jr. (2017)]]
Watkins names the clauses the Anti-Federalists warned about: the General Welfare clause at the beginning of Congress’s enumerated powers, the Necessary and Proper clause at the end of Congress’s enumerated powers, and the Commerce clause, which he says has today become a sort of universal jurisdiction for the national government over many matters. He adds that they predicted the treaty power could be used to undermine the rights of the people and the states, and says the predictions came “again and again and again.” In his account the Anti-Federalists seemed almost to have a crystal ball. He describes them as men dedicated to a form of republicanism that stressed government at the local level, which Mr. Jefferson called his ward republics—a different vision of government and republicanism from the one prevailing today. [[episodes/crossroads_for_liberty__with_william_watkins_jr|Crossroads for Liberty with William Watkins Jr. (2017)]]
Zadek carries the argument further in the same episode, telling listeners that all of the founding generation were of course patriots with the same goal, but that the Anti-Federalists saw something either the Federalists knew was there and did not care about, or did not see. He invites listeners to read a collection of writings called The Anti-Federalist Papers, essays written by those who opposed the Constitution, and says that when you read them alongside their dire predictions of what would happen, “it all happened.” To a T, he says, their predictions about the king-like power of the president and the reach of the federal government into everyday life came true, and the promises made by the founders turned out not to be so. He names Madison, Hamilton, Jay, and many others, including Washington, who he notes did not speak out much, as having got it wrong in terms of their promises. [[episodes/crossroads_for_liberty__with_william_watkins_jr|Crossroads for Liberty with William Watkins Jr. (2017)]]
Zadek frames the open question he puts to his guest: whether the Federalists knew they were selling something that was not as promised, or simply did not understand what they were doing as well as the Anti-Federalists did. The excerpt labels the segment that follows the break as The Federalist Papers as Propaganda and then breaks off at Zadek’s name. [[episodes/crossroads_for_liberty__with_william_watkins_jr|Crossroads for Liberty with William Watkins Jr. (2017)]]
Federalist 78 and the judiciary
The most specific number attached to the Federalist Papers in these excerpts comes in a discussion of the Supreme Court. Zadek recalls that during the Revolutionary era Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers, in Federalist 78—though Zadek says he could be wrong about the number—observing that the Supreme Court was the “least dangerous branch” because it had neither arms nor a purse, and could only say what it thought without power to enforce what it believed to be the law of the land. Zadek tells his guest, David Kaplan, that Hamilton, who knew a whole lot about a whole lot of things, may have got his view of the Supreme Court wrong, and that the Court has become far more powerful than the founders ever envisioned, if not dangerous. Demystifying the Supreme Court (2019)
Kaplan’s own argument does not rest on the Federalist number but on the Court’s subsequent history: for the first hundred or more years of the Supreme Court, he says, the Court was quite quiescent. He grants that it issued a terrible ruling like the Dred Scott ruling, but maintains that until the 20th century the Court was not nearly as powerful or triumphal as it has become. Demystifying the Supreme Court (2019)
Across episodes
The Federalist Papers appear in three episodes spanning roughly five years, and the excerpts show no development in how they are treated so much as a recurring use of them as a foil. In 2014 Buckley ranks the Framers’ convention debates above the Federalist Papers, with Zadek supplying Madison’s notes as the alternative source. In 2017 Watkins presses the comparison of Federalist promises against Anti-Federalist predictions and finds the opponents correct, while Zadek calls the citation of the essays as evidence of original meaning misplaced and invokes the Anti-Federalist collection instead. In 2019 Zadek returns to the essays only to quote Hamilton’s Federalist 78 description of the judiciary as the least dangerous branch, a characterization his guest then disputes on historical grounds. The later episodes do not overturn or refine the earlier judgment; they extend the same skepticism from the essays’ authority to the branch whose powers the essays defended.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not describe the individual essays beyond Federalist 78, do not name the authors of particular numbers, and do not say where or by whom the essays were published beyond New York. They give no account of the ratification votes themselves, of which states ratified or when, or of the outcome in New York that the essays were written to influence. The collection titled The Anti-Federalist Papers is recommended to listeners but never described in detail, and the episode segment headed The Federalist Papers as Propaganda breaks off at the host’s name with no content.