In a prefatory paragraph to the book, we are told, “The eighty-five essays written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison as ‘Publius’ to support the ratification of the Constitution in 1787 are regarded as the preeminent American contribution to Western political theory.”1 This is arguably accurate and definitely ironic. For example, two of the essays, Nos. 10 and 51, are now “the ur-texts of American constitutional theory” (9).2The Federalist writ large has, in turn, become especially important and influential in an era when debates about how best to read and apply the Constitution are dominated by arguments for and against “originalism,” a generally ill-defined and often misunderstood approach to constitutional interpretation. Originalism “argues that the meaning of the text is derived from the general understanding of the sovereign authority that approved it—the people themselves, acting through the state conventions that ratified the Constitution” (4).
What...