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The Federalist - a Symposium Introduction: The Federalist - A Symposium by James Etienne Viator* Schools have traditionally and properly shouldered a large part of the responsibility for preparing students to assume the citizen's role in the political community. The importance of this task to the health of the national body politic helps explain the recent concern of Americans about their schools. Parents' melancholy apprehensions about what and how well their children are being taught were confirmed in the 1983 Report of the National Commission on Ex- cellence in Education, A Nation at Risk.' The Report concentrated on the failure of schools to impart to many students the basic skills of reading and computation necessary for our economic survival in the modern, competitive world of international commerce. Equally if not more distressing is the lack of instruction in many schools concerning America's historical models for order, justice, and liberty - in short, the want of attention to the basic civic learning necessary for our political survival. 2 As noted educator Russell Kirk observes, the remedy for this state of affairs also provides the best means for a renewal of civic consciousness: "we ought to teach government, with strong emphasis upon the Constitution of the United States. And we ought to teach history, with strong emphasis upon the * Associate Professor of Law, Texas Tech University; B.A., 1971, University of New Orleans; J.D., 1985, Louisiana State University Law Center. The author gratefully acknowledges the support of a summer research grant from the Texas Tech University School of Law which permitted the editing and writing of this Symposium. 1. National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform - A Report to the Nation and the Secretary of Education, United States Department of Education 5 (April, 1983) ("[T]he educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation."). 2. See Robert A. Goldwin, Why Blacks, Women, and Jews Are Not Mentioned in the Constitution, and Other Unorthodox Views 42 (Washington, D.C.: AEI Press, 1990) (" 'Amer- icans today have a confused understanding of many of the Constitution's basic tenets and provisions' and 'a poor grasp of some elemental American history.' This was the finding of a national survey conducted by Research & Forecasts and sponsored by the Hearst Corporation in late 1986. Entitled 'The American Public's Knowledge of the U.S. Constitution,' the survey led its analysts to conclude that American ignorance of the Constitution is 'a problem in need of a remedy.' "). 2317 2318 TEXAS TECH LAW REVIEW [Vol. 21:2317 sources, remote or near in time, of the American moral and social 3 order. "1 Taking the long view of our contemporary difficulties in foreign and domestic affairs and heeding the suggestions from those of Dr. Kirk's convictions, the Texas Legislature passed, and the governor signed, a house concurrent resolution in late May of 1989 which marks a signal advance toward a restoration of the political learning necessary to the maintenance of our constitutional order. 4 Formally expressing the official position of the State, the Texas Legislature demonstrated its agreement with Clinton Rossiter's estimation that The Federalist ranks with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as a classic of American political theory.5 The House concurrent resolution proclaims that "[these documents stand as the foundation of our form of democracy, providing at the same time the touchstone of our national identity and the vehicle for orderly growth and change; and . [t]he survival of the republic requires that our nation's children, the future guardians of its heritage and participants in its governance, have a firm knowledge and under- standing of its principles and history .... "6 For all these reasons, the Resolution requested the Texas Board of Education "to take appropriate action to ensure that students be provided opportunities to 'analyze the purposes and political and economic philosophies of the United States Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Inde- pendence, and The Federalist Papers' and to take appropriate action to incorporate such documents and their analyses in materials pro- vided through the textbook adoption process. .'" This Symposium 3. Russell Kirk, Introduction, in Jerry Combee, Democracy at Risk: The Rising Tide of Political Illiteracy and Ignorance of the Constitution vii (Cumberland, Virginia, and Washing- ton, D.C.: Center for Judicial Studies, 1984); see Michael Zuckert, The Federalist at 200 - What's It To Us?, 7 Const Comm 97, 105 (1990) ("The sad fact is that the political science of The Federalist has been forgotten to a large degree .... The recovery of The Federalist's political science would be a great step forward in our ability to think clearly about political institutions, and would counteract our tendency to excessive moralizing." (footnote omitted)). 4. Tex. H. Con. Res. 41, 71st Leg., 1989 Tex. Gen. Laws 6295. 5. See Clinton Rossiter, Introduction in Clinton Rossiter, ed, The Federalist Papers, vii (New York: Mentor, 1961) [hereafter cited to this edition without reference to editor or author]; see also Jack P. Greene, The Intellectual Heritage of the Constitutional Era: The Delegates' Library 54 (Philadelphia: Library Company of Philadelphia, 1986) (describing The Federalist as "a brilliant explication of the Constitution ... that has remained the most profound American contribution to the literature of political thought."). 6. Tex. H. Con. Res. 41, 71st Leg., 1989 Tex. Gen. Laws 6295, 6295. 7. Id. 1990] INTRODUCTION 2319 serves as the effort of the contributors and the Texas Tech Law Review toward the realization of these estimable goals. What are these Federalist (or pro-Constitution) "papers," which have assumed the status of an authoritative public document, and what prompted their production? The Federalist comprises eighty- five essays that appeared under the pseudonym Publius at short intervals in New York City newspapers beginning on October 27, 1787. "Publius" was actually John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. Prompted by the strong Antifederalist opposition in his home State of New York, Alexander Hamilton decided that pro- Constitution arguments needed to be produced in order to influence both the electors of New York in their choice of delegates to the State ratification convention and also the delegates themselves.' The papers were intended also to have a similar influence in other States. But the chronology of their appearance virtually guaranteed that this was not to be. The first thirty-six Federalist papers were published in book form on March 22, 1788, and a complete edition of The Federalist was not available until May 28, 1788, when a second volume was published that contained numbers 37 through 85. By this time eight States had already ratified the Constitution, only one short of the necessary nine.9 Thus, as Yale historian Edmund S. Morgan remarked, The Federalist's "influence in securing adoption of the Constitution was not large."' 0 Its true significance was not, then, for the ratification, but for the subsequent interpretation of the Constitution. The Fed- eralist is "not only the most influential commentary ever written on the United States Constitution," but it also provides "a starting point for some of the major American political thinking of our own time."" Moreover, the future significance of The Federalist was 8. For an insightful and illuminating discussion of the appellations chosen and bestowed by the "Pro-" and "Anti-Constitution" forces, see Herbert J. Storing, What the Anti- Federalists Were For 9-14, 79 n.6 (Chicago and London: U. of Chicago Press, 1981). 9. Marvin Meyers, Introduction in Marvin Meyers, ed, The Mind of the Founder 121 (Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973); Rossiter, The Federalists Papers at viii (cited in note 5); Charles Warren, The Making of the Constitution 767 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1928). 10. Edmund S. Morgan, Refining the Public Spirit, 184 New Republic 26, 27 (January 24, 1989) (reviewing Garry Wills, Explaining America: The Federalist(Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1981)). 11. Id. For a detailed, though finally unconvincing, argument that The Federalist was 2320 TEXAS TECH LA W REVIEW [Vol. 21:2317 envisioned at the time by its authors. Thus, it was not written exclusively with a view to the ratification struggle; as Hamilton said in Federalist No. 34, "we must bear in mind that we are not to confine our view to the present, but to look forward to remote futurity."12 Furthermore, it would seem that the intent of Publius to instruct later Americans on their frame of government was quickly realized, for many Americans in the Early National Period were of the opinion that the Constitution should be a subject of education in the schools, with The Federalist providing a chief explanatory text. 3 Within decades, then, the qualities of The Federalist as a detailed, cogent description of the Constitution were widely perceived and voiced. Thomas Jefferson, for example, described it as an authoritative commentary on the principles of government, one to which "appeal is habitually made by all, and rarely declined or denied by any," as to the "genuine meaning" of the Constitution. 4 And Chief Justice John Marshall declared that "the opinions expressed by the authors of [The Federalist] have been justly supposed to be entitled to great respect in expounding the constitution."' 5 Thus, so respected was the expository work of Publius that even Jefferson and Marshall, bitter political enemies holding antipodal views of the Constitution, could agree that The Federalistprovided the vade mecum of constitutional interpretation. The Federalist so quickly gained this position of commanding respect because it was a culmination of inherited political ideology nothing more than campaign literature designed for the limited goal of ratification, see Albert Furtwangler, The Authority of Publius: A Reading of the Federalist Papers (Ithaca, New York, and London: Cornell U.
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