The Federalist is one of America’s sacred scriptures. Written in 1788 by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison (all three under the pen-name “Publius”), this series of essays was aimed at convincing the voters of New York that their state convention should vote to ratify the Constitution. Since its publication in book form, the essays have become part of the constitutional canon; some Supreme Court opinions, for example, turn entirely on disputed meanings found by the Justices in Federalist essays, cited as evidence of the “original understanding” of those who wrote and ratified the Constitution.
In 2014, constitutional scholar Sanford Levinson set out to engage the Federalist less as infallible past wisdom and more as an invitation to present dialogue. The resulting book, An Argument Open to All: Reading the Federalist in the Twenty-First Century, will be published by Yale University Press in November. Here, in the spirit of Constitution Day, we present a slightly edited version of Levinson’s response to Federalist Number Eight, written by Alexander Hamilton. In Federalist Eight, Hamilton attempts to rebut an important argument against the Constitution—that it will allow the new government to keep a standing army, seen as a danger to liberty. Levinson ponders the changed role of the military, and possible new dangers to liberty, in our time.
Read more: Federalist 8: On the Rise of a Militarized State | Ten Miles Square | The Washington Monthly
