Madison’s Opponents and Constitutional Design
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delegates when he explained that he consented to the Constitution “because I expect no better” (RFC
September 17, II: 643).
The political accommodations on which Madison’s opponents insisted have had an enduring
impact on American politics. Federalism illustrates this impact as well as any Constitutional feature.
American federalism was not designed simply to check national power, because too many of the
supporters of the Constitution wanted the national government to have some very effective powers to
provide for currency regulation, commercial treaties, a national revenue stream, national defense, and
other nationalized public goods beneficial to their constituents and the nation. While Madison battled for
extensive national sovereignty, Roger Sherman advanced the idea of dual sovereignty as a justification for
nationalizing some public goods while protecting the states’ remaining autonomy and political
prerogatives. Federalism in the Constitution emerged from a long series of interdependent, issue-by-issue
compromises, guided by the ongoing clash between the Madison and the Sherman positions on which
level of government would control which tools of public policy, and how each level would use those tools
to govern politics. Sherman and his allies got a limited nationalization of public goods, a list of
enumerated national powers, state control of residual policy authority, and some defensive tools that
states could use to fight the aggregation of power by the national government. Despite Madison’s efforts,
the national government would manage only international and interstate commerce, while the states
would govern commerce within their borders. Madison and his allies got a sort of ersatz national veto
vested in the federal courts through the supremacy clause, and some Constitutional language that could be
used to press for the expansion of national power on a case by case basis.
These compromises narrowed future political battles over the frontier of national power, but they
neither defined the frontier clearly nor provided definitive guidelines for resolving these future conflicts
(see also Rakove, 1996: 201). Though the delegates argued at length about the precise boundaries of state
powers, they never could enumerate precisely what kinds of public goods would be provided by the states
and which by the national government. Sherman’s own list of essential national powers was glaringly
imprecise (RFC June 6, I: 133), and the delegates collectively were at a loss to define key warrants of
Convention