THE FEDERALIST as LIBERAL EDUCATION

Peter Berkowitz, as Carl numerically suggests below, has written an article bemoaning the fact that most American liberal-artsy grads have never read THE FEDERALIST.

Well, we can doubt that’s the fault of anyone who reads this blog. I’ve taught some of the key papers (close to—but not identical to—Carl’s list) for over 30 years. They are collected, along with all kinds of other indispensable stuff, in my AMERICAN POLITICAL RHETORIC (available in its 6th edition from Rowman and Littlefield).

I, for one, am glad that Peter puts THE FEDERALIST more on the LIBERAL EDUCATION than CIVIC EDUCATION list.

It’s not so clear to me—contra Berkowitz—why anyone who reads THE FEDERALIST would know that the Obama mandate is unconstitutional in a way that would compel our Supreme Court to declare it void.

The various ways our Constitution make very unlikely a tyrannical national legislature described in FEDERALIST 10 and 51 don’t include judicial review. The coalition-building process in an extended and diverse republic, the ambition of the president countering the ambition of Congress with powerful constitutional means, etc. should be enough. Even the account of judicial review (sort of) in FEDERALIST 78 appears to be mainly a response to the Anti-Federalist author Brutus. The primary concern of Brutus is that judicial review is a stealth weapon implicit in the idea of a written Constitution that would be used by the evildoing Federalists to dispower the states. (Brutus in a convoluted way turned out to be a darned god predictor, and I could maybe show that Hamilton implicitly acknowledges Brutus may well be right—but that’s not, for Hamilton, a bad thing.) The least we can say is that JUDICIAL REVIEW as a tool for containing the relatively tame national legislature described in FEDERALIST 10 is not a prominent theme in THE FEDERALIST. In the event president and Congress agree, it’s really unclear that THE FEDERALIST thought of the Court as an effective or even appropriate counterweight.

In teaching THE FEDERALIST, we can’t neglect the fact that it’s a partisan document, designed both to get the Constitution ratified and spin how it will be interpreted down the road. We shouldn’t confuse THE FEDERALIST with the Constitution.

One reason, maybe, we should teach THE FEDERALIST is to inculcate in our students a VENERATION for the Constitution. That not superfluous adantage of veneration is the theme of FEDERALIST 49. Mr. Ceaser is so impressed by the argument for veneration that FEDERALIST 49 appears on the license plate of one of his big cars. The Constitution will pick up the veneration associated with anything that’s OLD and hard to charge. But that effect of making constitutional change—by amendment or convention—so difficult doesn’t mean the Constitution is good. THE FEDERALIST makes it all too clear that the connection between being old and recalcitrant and being good isn’t reasonable. It’s just a connection people naturally make, and it can help out in sustaining something that’s actually good—the Constitution.

So the reason THE FEDERALIST is LIBERAL EDUCATION is that’s a great tool for teaching how to follow partisan but deep political arguments in tough—but not that tough (each FEDERALIST is pretty self-contained and short, for one thing)—texts. It’s stunningly impressive how much a recently designed (or uncustomary) Constitution can be supported by reason. There’s also an impressive connection, of course, between that thought and how well the Constitution has worked.

In the name of LIBERAL EDUCATION, we have to attend to the partisan and otherwise questionable character of THE FEDERALIST’s arguments. And here, of course, the ANTI-FEDERALISTS, Tocqueville, and even the evil-thinking and evildoing progressives are invaluable teaching tools.