Imitation of Switzerland: Historical Reflections

1988 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Steinberg
Keyword(s):  
Alexander Hamilton ◽  
American Founding ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Federalist Papers ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Swiss Confederation ◽  
The Federalist Papers ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Moment

CAN THE SWISS CONFEDERATION BE IMITATED? THAT DEPENDS, says the historian, on what you mean by imitation. Switzerland has certainly served as a model for others, sometimes a model distinctly not to be imitated. When the American Founding Fathers gathered in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 to write a new constitution and ‘to form a more perfect Union’, they had Switzerland in mind. Alexander Hamilton, a chief actor in that enterprise, devoted part of an issue of The Federalist Papers, written the following year as a defence of what the framers had drafted, to a close analysis of the Swiss Confederation. Switzerland did not impress him:The connection among the Swiss cantons scarcely amounts to a confederacy, though it is sometimes cited as an instance of the stability of such institutions. They have no common treasury; no common troops even in war; no common coin; no common judicatory; nor any other common part of sovereignty …He recognised that they were held together ‘by their joint interest’ but saw the confederacy as a poor guarantor of internal and external coherence. ‘Whatever efficacy the union may have had in ordinary cases, it appears that the moment a cause of difference sprang up capable of trying its strength it failed.’

New Constitutional Forms in Africa

1960 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-76
Author(s):  
Herbert J. Spiro
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Unique Combination ◽  
American Founding ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Federalist Papers ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
Effectiveness And Efficiency ◽  
The Federalist Papers

When the American Founding Fathers set about the task of perfecting the constitution of their union, they turned to the theory and practice of the Old World for counsel and illustration. The Federalist Papers contain many references to Hume and Montesquieu, the British Constitution and ancient leagues. However, it was not copying from foreign examples that made such an outstanding success of the Constitution of the United States. Rather it was the authors' imaginative creativity that gave to this oldest of the still operating written constitutions its unique combination of stability and flexibility, effectiveness and efficiency.

scholarly journals Rule by the Few in the Federalist Papers: An Examination of the Aristocratic Preference of Publius

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl M. Felice
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
American People ◽  
Alexander Hamilton ◽  
James Madison ◽  
Federalist Papers ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Federalist Papers

AbstractThe Federalist Papers are a set of eighty-five essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay during the founding era of the United States, with the purpose of persuading the states to adopt the Constitution as the replacement for the Articles of Confederation. The Papers were some of the most impressive political writings of the time, and are still cited frequently today by the United States Supreme Court. The arguments set forth in the Papers attempted to defend the Constitution's aristocratic characteristics against its opponents, the Anti-Federalists, while also attempting to normalize an anti-democratic, representative form of government in the minds of the American people. The clever advocacy and skillful rhetoric employed by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay led to the eventual ratification of the Constitution, and consequently the creation of the most powerful and prosperous nation on the planet. This paper examines the differences between the traditional forms of government, the political philosophies of the Papers’ authors, the anti-democratic, aristocratic nature of the government proposed by the Constitution, and the arguments for and against its adoption, as articulated in the Papers and various other writings.

The Author Problem: Bayesian Inference with Two Hypotheses

2019 ◽  
pp. 48-60
Author(s):  
Therese M. Donovan ◽  
Ruth M. Mickey
Keyword(s):  
Bayesian Inference ◽  
Probability Distribution ◽  
Posterior Probability ◽  
Prior Probability ◽  
Alternative Hypothesis ◽  
Alexander Hamilton ◽  
James Madison ◽  
Federalist Papers ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
The Federalist Papers

The “Author Problem” provides a concrete example of Bayesian inference. This chapter draws on work by Frederick Mosteller and David Wallace, who used Bayesian inference to assign authorship for unsigned Federalist Papers. The Federalist Papers were a collection of papers known to be written during the American Revolution. However, some papers were unsigned by the author, resulting in disputed authorship. The chapter provides a very basic Bayesian analysis of the unsigned “Paper 54,” which was written by Alexander Hamilton or James Madison. The example illustrates the principles of Bayesian inference for two competing hypotheses, including the concepts of alternative hypothesis, prior probability distribution, posterior probability distribution, prior probability of a hypothesis, likelihood of the observed data, and posterior probability of a hypothesis.

scholarly journals Testing Delta on the «Disputed Federalist Papers»

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 133
Author(s):  
Antonio Miranda García ◽  
Javier Calle Martín
Keyword(s):  
Authorship Attribution ◽  
Alexander Hamilton ◽  
James Madison ◽  
Crucial Point ◽  
Function Words ◽  
Test Probe ◽  
Federalist Papers ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
The Federalist Papers ◽  
Traditional Approaches

<em>The Federalist Papers</em> stand out as an excellent proving ground in the field of authorship attribution, being nowadays considered a breaking issue in literary detection. The crucial point of the <em>Federalist Papers</em> is the set of the <em>Disputed Papers</em>, twelve articles traditionally attributed either to Alexander Hamilton or James Madison. This authorial obscurity, together with the existence of undisputed samples, surely explains the proliferation of studies trying to spot the hand responsible for the <em>Disputed Papers</em>, particularly throughout the second half of the 20th century, both with traditional and non-traditional approaches. Since the publication of Mosteller and Wallace’s masterpiece, there has been a consensus as to consider them exclusively Madisonian (Mosteller &amp; Wallace 1963: 300; 1964: 16). Notwithstanding this incessant activity on the <em>Federalist Papers</em> as a test probe for authorial purposes, the use of Burrows’ Delta is still deemed a desideratum in the field, a technique proposing that the salient features which characterize an author’s style can be obtained from the hierarchy of the most common function words (Burrows 2002: 267-87; 2003: 5-32). The present paper then proposes the testing of Burrows’ model in a twofold version: a) modified Delta; and b) simplified Delta. The results come to corroborate the lexical differences between Hamilton and Madison, a fact allowing us to validate the hypothesis of the Madisonian composition of the <em>Disputed Papers</em>, exception being made of Paper 55.

Saving the Revolution: The Federalist Papers and the American Founding

1988 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 923
Author(s):  
Harold M. Hyman ◽  
Charles R. Kesler ◽  
Burke Marshall
Keyword(s):  
American Founding ◽  
Federalist Papers ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
The Federalist Papers ◽  
The Revolution

scholarly journals The American Judiciary Through the Lens of The Federalist Papers

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 10-15
Author(s):  
Eric Rayment-Law
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
American Founding ◽  
Supreme Court Justice ◽  
Federalist Papers ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
Controversial Topic ◽  
The Federalist Papers ◽  
Interpretive Strategies

The manner in which a Supreme Court justice ought to rule in any given case before him or her is a controversial topic in America, with a number of American lawmakers feeling that each justice should exercise “judicial restraint.” Those who feel this way often subscribe to the interpretive strategies of strict construction or originalism, which both cast judges as activists who have a political agenda, imposing it on America while ignoring the Constitution. As a remedy to their grievances, constructionists propose that the constitutional text should be rigorously adhered to while constitutional rights should be narrowly defined. Similarly, originalists propose that the Justices of the American Supreme Court interpret the law according to the intentions of the founding generation. This paper assesses the validity of these interpretive strategies by entertaining the originalist argument (albeit modified) and deferring judgment in this matter to The Federalist number seventy-eight and number ten.  Upon analysis of these American founding documents, it is found that the intent of the founding generation to indeed create a judiciary that adheres to the parameters set by the Constitution, but also one that possesses room to incorporate their own judicial philosophies into their legal interpretations as opposed to one that exercises strict judicial restraint.

Alexander Hamilton and the Early Republic in Edwardian Imperial Thought

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick M. Kirkwood
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Early Republic ◽  
The United States ◽  
Alexander Hamilton ◽  
George Washington ◽  
American Federation ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
The Federalist Papers

In the first decade of the twentieth century, a rising generation of British colonial administrators profoundly altered British usage of American history in imperial debates. In the process, they influenced both South African history and wider British imperial thought. Prior usage of the Revolution and Early Republic in such debates focused on the United States as a cautionary tale, warning against future ‘lost colonies’. Aided by the publication of F. S. Oliver's Alexander Hamilton (1906), administrators in South Africa used the figures of Hamilton and George Washington, the Federalist Papers, and the drafting of the Constitution as an Anglo-exceptionalist model of (modern) self-government. In doing so they applied the lessons of the Early Republic to South Africa, thereby contributing to the formation of the Union of 1910. They then brought their reconception of the United States, and their belief in the need for ‘imperial federation’, back to the metropole. There they fostered growing diplomatic ties with the US while recasting British political history in-light-of the example of American federation. This process of inter-imperial exchange culminated shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles when the Boer Generals Botha and Smuts were publicly presented as Washington and Hamilton reborn.

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