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The Federalist Papers, originally written and published during 1787 and 1788 in several New York State newspapers, intended to promote the ratification of the United States Constitution. They were widely read and respected for their masterly analysis and interpretation of the Constitution and constitutional principles upon which the government of the United States was established. This influential collection of 85 articles and essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay remains to this day a treasured historical document for anyone who wants to understand the U.S. Constitution.
This authoritative edition of the complete texts of the Federalist Papers, the Articles of Confederation, the U.S. Constitution, and the Amendments to the U.S. Constitution features supporting essays in which leading scholars provide historical context and analysis. An introduction by Ian Shapiro offers an overview of the publication of the Federalist Papers and their importance. In three additional essays, John Dunn explores the composition of the Federalist Papers and the conflicting agendas of its authors; Eileen Hunt Botting explains how early advocates of women’s rights, most prominently Mercy Otis Warren, Judith Sargent Murray, and Charles Brockden Brown, responded to the Federalist-Antifederalist debates; and Donald Horowitz discusses the Federalist Papers from the perspective of recent experiments with democracy and constitution-making around the world. These essays both illuminate the original texts and encourage active engagement with them.
The Federalist Papers constitute a key document in the understanding of the American government. Written by John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton, these 85 texts were published between 1787 and 1788 to convince the state of New York to ratify the Constitution. Today, the Papers are studied in courses on American government, American political thought, and constitutional law. However, the size and organization of the full text, notwithstanding its complex political concepts and context, make it difficult for students to apprehend. The Reader's Guide will be a key tool to help them understand the issues at hand and the significance of the Papers then and now. Organized around key issues, such as the branches of the government, the utility of the Union, or skepticism of a national regime, the work will walk the reader through the 85 Papers, providing them with the needed intellectual and historical contexts. Designed to supplement the reading of The Federalist Papers, the guide will help elucidate not only their contents, but also their importance and contemporary relevance.
A multifaceted approach to The Federalist that covers both its historical value and its continuing political relevance.
In The Political Theory of “The Federalist,” David F. Epstein offers a guide to the fundamental principles of American government as they were understood by the framers of the Constitution. Epstein here demonstrates the remarkable depth and clarity of The Federalist’s argument, reveals its specifically political (not merely economic) view of human nature, and describes how and why the American regime combines liberal and republican values. “While it is a model of scholarly care and clarity, this study deserves an audience outside the academy. . . . David F. Epstein’s book is a fine demonstration of just how much a close reading can accomplish, free of any flights of theory or fancy references.”—New Republic “Epstein’s strength lies in two aspects of his own approach. One is that he reads the text with uncommon closeness and sensitivity; the other is an extensive knowledge of the European political thought which itself forms an indispensable background to the minds of the authors.”—Times Literary Supplement
The Madisonian approach to institutional design, as set forth in The Federalist Papers, is examined from the point of view of leading theorists of the ""public choice"" school who see themselves as the political heirs of that earlier legacy. Bernard Grofman taught a course on representation in which the readings included both the Federalist Papers and Buchanan and Tullock s Calculus of Consent. In teaching that course (and, as he writes, forcing himself to reread the Federalist carefully for the first time since his own graduate student days), his admiration for its authors, already high, grew.
The Federalist is considered the most important work on statecraft and political theory ever written by Americans. Seventy-seven of the 85 essays that make up the work appeared in New York newspapers between October 1787 and May 1788 under the pseudonym "Publius." The eight additional essays first appeared in the second volume of the work presented here, and in the newspapers later in 1788. Principally written by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, with some assistance from John Jay, the primary purpose of the essays was to convince the citizens of New York to elect to a state ratifying convention delegates who would favor the new United States Constitution, adopted in Philadelphia on Sept...
No competing edition of The Federalist offers nearly as much help in grasping Publius' arguments in defense of the new but unratified United States Constitution of 1787 as this new annotated edition by J. R. Pole. Essay by essay--with ample cross-references and glosses on 18th-century linguistic usage--Pole's commentary lays bare the intellectual background and assumptions of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay; explicates and critiques The Federalist's central concepts, rhetorical strategies, and arguments; and points up the international, national, and local facts on the ground relevant to Confederation Era New Yorkers, the constituency to which The Federalist was originally addressed. Pole's Introduction, a brief chronology of political events from 1688 to 1791, a brief overview of the themes of the essays, the text of the Constitution cross-referenced to The Federalist, and an index of proper names, concepts, and themes that also functions as a glossary further distinguish this edition.
AFTER an unequivocal experience of the inefficacy of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America. The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting in the world. It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and ch...
This modern English version of sixteen of Publius' most important essays is designed to set forth their argument in the clearest terms: the promise of the U.S. Constitution. Though The Federalist was itself written for the same purpose, the complexity of its prose and the meaning of several of its key terms have now passed out of currency—with the result that the original texts are now less able to communicate effectively to the uninitiated than they were when the first essays were published in 1787. Faithfully re-phrased for modern readers by an established and respected scholar of American political thought—and supplemented by quotations from the original texts—the selected essays included here offer today’s readers a judicious and effective first approach to The Federalist's most important ideas.