Federalist No. 51: Is Liberty Guaranteed by Structures?

Document

Cited in

DOI	http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2011.02466.x
Author	Laurence E. Lynn
Date	01 December 2011
Published date	01 December 2011

Laurence E. Lynn, Jr., is the Sid

Richardson Research Professor in the

Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs

at the University of Texas at Austin. He also

is a professor of public management at the

Manchester Business School and the Sydney

Stein Jr. Professor of Public Management

Emeritus at the University of Chicago. His

research and teaching focus on governance

and public management.

E-mail: llynn@gmail.com

Is Liberty Guaranteed by Structures? S83

Laurence E. Lynn, Jr.

University of Texas at Austin

Federalist No. 51 can be read as a statement of the

national government’s dual responsibility to serve the

public interest and to preserve liberty. It is built on James

Madison’s belief in checks and balances as a method

for keeping government’s parts in their proper places.

 is essay asks whether this gridlock has gone too far in

rendering the constitutional design obsolete. Drawing on

previously unpublished fragments

of Federalist No. 51, the author

argues that Madison fully

anticipated these problems, and

he of‌f ers the unpublished text as

a salutary appendix to this iconic

defense of liberty.

Is America’s constitutional order failing to vin-

dicate the founders’ conviction that it would

serve the public interest and preserve liberty? Is

Madison’s carefully structured political design now a

gridlock too far?

 e 2010 U.S. midterm elections underscored the

salience of this issue. Frustration with, and anger

toward, a political system frequently described as dys-

functional and broken—politics exaggerates our dif-

ferences rather than narrowing them, according to one

commentator—has been associated with historically

low levels of public trust in American government.

Attacks on the power of the presidency, on federal

preemption of states’ rights, on f‌i scal and monetary

policy and management, on judicial polarization, and

on a frequently paralyzed Congress raise questions as

to whether the founders’ elegant scheme of separated,

federated powers modulated by checks and balances

any longer validates their faith in our unique republi-

can form of democratic governance.

Yet, while critics of Madisonian democracy argue that

it frustrates the enactment of the popular will, the

actualization of majoritarian rule, and the preservation

of individual freedom, its defenders contend that dur-

ing a time of uncertainty and political conf‌l ict rooted

in transformation and change occurring on local,

national, and global scales, the Madisonian scheme is

performing exactly as intended: ensuring, in Madi-

son’s words, that “[our government’s] several constitu-

ent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means

of keeping each other in their proper places” ( e

Federalist, 336).1 Widespread frustration and anger,

contemporary Madisonians argue, ref‌l ect the dis-

content of passionate interests

properly kept in their places.

 is essay explores the question,

has Madisonian government

become obsolete? I f‌i rst will

review Madison’s arguments

on behalf of the Constitution’s

design as set forth in Federalist Nos. 47 and 51. Next,

the present form of this design will be described, not-

ing in particular the evolution of what Madison called

“subordinate distributions of power.” Various argu-

ments that question the appropriateness of this scheme

as it has evolved, including arguments that constitu-

tional governance in its present form, with its emphasis

on representation, is illiberal and antidemocratic, then

are considered.  e essay’s f‌i nal section reproduces a

lost fragment of Federalist No. 51 that reveals Madi-

son’s anticipation of the modern condition and con-

cludes that, all things considered, the brilliance of the

founders’ scheme continues to be fully ref‌l ected in the

ability of America’s republican democracy to temper,

although not eliminate, the defects of liberty’s virtues.

Checks and Balances: The Founders’

Conception

In Federalist No. 47, James Madison examined

“the particular structure of this government, and

the distribution of … power among its constituent

parts” (312). His purpose was to contest the claim by

critics of the Philadelphia document that its blend-

ing of legislative, executive, and judicial powers—