Still no sign of my ancient copy of The Federalist Papers but for some reason Amazon gave me a 15 dollar discount on a Kindle version of them, so I’m good to go for my super-awesome procrastination plan of reading them through instead of doing any actual work. I feel like a rhetorical defense of originalism is what’s brewing in my head and although that might sound like a contradiction to some of you and incredibly stupid to the rest of you, I think that any defense of any hermeneutic approach is going to be rhetorical.

Two things on my mind this morning as I virtually attend the C-SPAN Center for Scholarship and Engagement Annual Conference:

I forgot, or perhaps never knew that The Federalist Papers were aimed at, and made for a New York City audience. It was very important to Hamilton’s strategy of ratification of the work of the convention to get the city on board with the new Constitution, as that would flip a lot of other minds in other towns as well as render most of New York’s citizens views outside the city irrelevant.

For an unnamed side project that I’ll probably talk about on here one day, I’m putting together a class tentatively called “Debating New York” where we just go through all the various controversies that New York City has faced over time and have class debates, discuss, research, and write about them. This class takes on my idea that debate is a site of inquiry meant for discovering and learning. So now I can include the debate over the Constitution as a New York city debate, thanks to Alexander Hamilton anyway.

The other thought is this: Could you do an entire debate or argument course on The Federalist Papers? Like, just read through those, some of the Convention debates from Madison or other sources, and have the students construct arguments about and around the issues that are brought up in the papers? I don’t think every essay matters that much anymore, but depending on when you taught the class there would be some play and emphasis. For example, if I was teaching this right now I would put a lot more emphasis on Hamilton’s three essays on the role of the judiciary and try to see what those mean for the Barrett hearings, as well as for her understanding of originalism. What’s an originalist take on the role of the Supreme Court, or the process for getting people nominated and confirmed?

In times where there are congressional debates, perhaps focus more on those essays. Maybe pair the reading of the papers with Joseph Ellis’s great book Quartet which would give some more background on the framing and shaping of these arguments. I wonder if I could pull this off.

Regardless of these future plans, it’s becoming clear to me I’m going to have to go up to my office to see if I can find my 1990s copy of the book, my dissolving Federalist papers collection, on my shelf up there, no doubt coated with a fine powder of 1950s building materials sluffing off the celling, dirt, and dead coronavirus particles. Sounds so exciting. I really just can’t wait. Although I did hear a rumor I’m getting a new office, but I’m sure that means the actual policy is at least 2 years away.