The Federalist in the Supreme Court

The authors of the series of anonymous newspaper articles afterwards known to fame as "The Federalist" had no intention of compiling a law book.They were addressing the people at large and their aim was to influence public opinion, not to formulate priiciples for the guidance of courts.No one foresaw the possibility that what they were writing would some day be cited in the law reports along with Blackstone and Kent.It was the critical hour of American history when these essays (there were eighty-five of them, each addressed "To the People of the State of New York" and signed "Publius") made their appearance in the New York newspapers.The proposed Federal Constitution, framed behind dosed doors by Washington and his associates in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, had just been made public and submitted to the States for ratification.That Convention, authorized merely to revise the Articles of the existing Confederation, had exceeded its authority and prepared a new plan of union on radically different lines.A storm of attack and denunciation had broken and the fate of the new proposals hung in the balance.They were bitterly assailed on the platform and in the press, notably in a series of papers signed "Cato" (probably the pseudonym of Governor George Clinton of New York), and another able series signed "Brutus", written by Judge Robert Yates of the New York Supreme Court who had been a delegate to the convention.The "Publius" letters, primarily written for the purpose of answering the arguments of Cato and his fellow pamphleteers, were a part of the controversial literature of a bitterly controversial period.Moreover they were written in extreme haste, by young men.Hamilton who originated the idea and wrote a majority of the papers was only thirty.Madison his chief associate in the work was thirty-six.It seems little short of miraculous that these men, working under such conditions of controversy and haste, should have produced what they actually brought forth-a reasoned and profound treatise on the American scheme of government, destined to affect the course of political thought throughout the world.Perhaps the most impressive of all the tributes to the greatness of "The Federalist" has been the deference paid to it in decisions of the United States Supreme Court.From the days of Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth down to the present time these unofficial newspaper essays have frequently been called upon by the highest tribunal of the nation for help in solving the nation's problems.Yet amid all the editions, translations, commentaries and discussions of disputed questions of authorship, text and bibliography no collection of these Supreme Court