The Anti-Federalists: Past as Prologue
The Anti-Federalists should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand our Constitution. That’s for three reasons. First, we owe them credit for the Bill of Rights. Second, their papers are rich in predictive judgments and political theory that should be studied, evaluated, and understood in and of themselves. Third, the Anti-Federalists framed the constitutional debate in 1787—and in some ways, they continue to frame it today. Their themes reverberate across the centuries. And nowhere do they reverberate more loudly than in our debates over executive power and administrative law.
