Civics In A Year
What do you really know about American government, the Constitution, and your rights as a citizen?
Civics in a Year is a fast-paced podcast series that delivers essential civic knowledge in just 10 minutes per episode. Over the course of a year, we’ll explore 250 key questions—from the founding documents and branches of government to civil liberties, elections, and public participation.
Rooted in the Civic Literacy Curriculum from the Center for American Civics at Arizona State University, this series is a collaborative project supported by the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership. Each episode is designed to spark curiosity, strengthen constitutional understanding, and encourage active citizenship.
Whether you're a student, educator, or lifelong learner, Civics in a Year will guide you through the building blocks of American democracy—one question at a time.
Civics In A Year
Unpacking Federalist 39: Madison's Blueprint for American Power
Dr. Beienberg explores Federalist 39, Madison's comprehensive explanation of how the Constitution blends federal and national elements to create an effective yet balanced government structure.
• Federalist 39 first defends the Constitution as establishing a republican government where all offices are filled directly or indirectly by the people
• Madison distinguishes between federal systems (power flows up from states) and national systems (power flows down from central authority)
• The Constitution creates a hybrid system taking the best elements from both approaches
• The scope of federal powers is limited (federal principle) while the execution of those powers is direct (national principle)
• The legislative branch embodies this mixture - Senate (federal) and House (national)
• The Electoral College, amendment process, and constitutional ratification also blend federal and national characteristics
• This mixed approach prevents the federal government from overreaching while enabling it to execute its enumerated powers effectively
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School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership
Welcome back to our essentially. We have this now whole thing on the Federalist Papers, and I'm excited to have Dr Beinberg back with us, and I'm actually really excited to talk about Federalist 39. Because, again, if you've been listening, I was an AP Gov teacher for a while and so we did, you know, 10, 51, 70, 78. And 39 is not one that I am familiar with, and 39 is not one that I am familiar with. So, dr Beinberg, can you kind of help us understand what was the main idea of Federalist?
Speaker 2:No 39? Federalist 39,. I'm excited to do this because Federalist 39 might be my favorite of the Federalist papers. There's a little sort of with a piece of something from Federalist 45 that are often paired together. So Federalist 39 does has, I would say, sort of two main ideas the one that I think is the more important that I'll spend the most time on, but I would be negligent if I didn't at least nod to the first one. So the first third or so of that paper is a defense that the Constitution is a Republican government.
Speaker 2:And Madison, you can see, is a little prickly about this argument because he thinks it's kind of a. He seemingly thinks this is kind of a dumb argument that he even has to answer this. But he effectively says yes, it's a Republican form of government which we all agree is what we want. We're not a monarchy, we're not an aristocracy, we are a republic. And he goes through and basically says and what do we all pretty much agree means a republic? Well, that, if you know, it's not a direct democracy, we're not taking a massive poll on every issue. But he says basically, the core of a republic is that all of the offices are filled either directly or indirectly by the people and from the people, right? So, yes, he says you know the judges, no one's voting for the judges, but you're at least voting for somebody who votes for somebody who votes for the judges, right? So he says, at the end of the day, look, look at this entire institution. There's nothing in here that's hereditary. Everything except for the judges, which, he says, and you probably want these, is life. Tenure, but everybody except for them is on fixed terms. They can be removed. Tenure, but everybody except for them is on fixed terms, they can be removed. Everybody can either be impeached or voted out of office or kicked out of office, so that the people ultimately maintain, if not the sort of micro level of managing every particular policy, they are able to choose the broad contours of their political society. So he goes into that a little bit more, but that's basically the core of his case. It's like, yes, this is obviously a Republican form of government. All of these positions somebody voted for, either the person in office or the person who voted for the person in office. We are not, you know, absolute France. Knock it off.
Speaker 2:Then the core of the Federalist 39 is a discussion about the institutional arrangements of the division of power between the central government and the state governments, and this is part of why the term Federalist, federalist Papers, federalism there's some overlap among these terms and I know students get very easily confused on this and then the party as well. But a little bit of, and I'll try not to be too political science-y about this. But the fundamental division between two kinds of governments are what would be called a federal government, which doesn't just mean central. Federal means that it is basically power is decentralized and divided, with primary authority lying with the lower levels of power, so in this case the states In Canada it would be the provinces, in Mexico it's going to be states. But federal means that basically presumptive power lies with the lower ranking units. By contrast, political scientists would call it unitary, madison uses the term national. But this is a government in which power starts at the top, with whatever the central government is, and they hand power down to the lower units. So fundamentally federal sort of bottom up, the bottom builds the top. In national or unitary, the top builds the bottom and basically everybody recognizes that they want a federal government. In the United States this is what the Articles of Confederation was. There is very little appetite for switching to a unitary government because from their perspective that was one of the problems with the British Empire. We don't want that, but we recognize that we've tilted too far toward federal. So we need to push in a couple of places toward more national, not because national is inherently better, but Federalist.
Speaker 2:39 is a sort of piece-by-piece argument where Madison says these are the advantages of federal, these are the advantages of national. Let's combine them in ways that might look weird but will actually give us the best of both worlds. And so he says is this a federal government? Is this a national government? He says it's fundamentally parts of both and let's get the best parts of both. And so he says, for example, in terms of the scope of the powers of this federal government, he says it is fundamentally federal. Why? Because the only powers that can be exercised by the United States government are those which are specifically enumerated to it by the US Constitution. All the other powers remain with the state government.
Speaker 1:And enumerated specifically means they are listed.
Speaker 2:Yes, they're spelled out, congress shall have the power to do X. Article 1, section 8 is most of the list, but basically Congress has the power to do X. You don't have to say the state has the power to do X. The state can do it unless you've told them no under a federal system. So the scope of the powers are federal. Feds can only do what the states have given them authority to do. Beds can only do what the states have given them authority to do. Conversely, though, madison says the execution of the powers is national, because no longer and this is arguably the most important shift from the Articles of Confederation to the US Constitution it's still federal, but its execution is now national. The federal law is now implemented by a federal executive and adjudicated in a federal court system, rather than before or in a pure federal system where the central government says states, please execute our law for us. You can see it's not quite the right analogy, but you can see an analogy of this with, say, the United Nations. Right, the United Nations can't just straight up say this is happening. They make a sort of request or demand of the nations in this case. So in this case, with the execution of federal law, the US government can now execute its own law. That's national. So Madison says this gives you the best of both worlds because you don't have to fear this federal government is going to be micromanaging your life or doing all sorts of things. But when we have decided that we want the federal government to have a power, by giving it that constitutional authority we can cut out the middleman of having the states then execute the law and have their own sort of incentives. Oh well, you know we've got to. We'd love to spend money on that, but we got potholes right Like no. It's executes itself. So the scope is federal, the execution is national.
Speaker 2:And then he goes on and works through the various institutions of the United States government to make sort of a similar analysis. So he says okay, the legislative branch is the most important part of any Republican government. How is it allocated? And he says well, we have one house, the Senate, that is selected by the states. That's how it would be in a federal government. Suriname and the United States and Canada and Libya all have the exact same numbers of votes in the United Nations. It's a treaty, so it's not quite the same, but it's functionally.
Speaker 2:As an illustration of this, it doesn't matter how big or important you are. In a federal system, everybody gets sort of the same influence because you're treated as the relevant unit. Is that sovereignty? So he says that looks federal. On the other hand, the way that we're allocating the House of Representatives is divided by the entire population of the United States, broadly speaking, and that, he says, looks national. So the British would look at this and say this is crazy. You can't have this mixed, theoretical, this theoretically messy system. And Madison says, why not? We get the advantages of both. So there are legislative chambers, one house is federal, one house is, he says, national, and we would say unitary. Then says let's look at the president, it's the same thing. The electoral college is allocated by a mix of the number of the house plus the number of the Senate. So it is literally divided in terms of how it's allocated by this same sort of mixed system.
Speaker 2:The constitutional amendment process, generally stuff will be proposed by Congress but then it has to be approved by the state. That's how it would be federal. So that system is mixed, although he notes that there is also the way just to go straight through state to state, where the state proposes and then the states ratify. But he doesn't say that's the thing there, but that's part of the process. But the amendment process is mixed. And then he says how do we ratify this constitution? It's federal.
Speaker 2:No state can be forced to participate. Rhode Island can go be its own little independent country even though all the states around it have ratified it. So no one is forced to participate in this. So Federalist 39, I would say, forced to participate in this. So Federalist 39, I would say there's a couple little punchier quotes in, like Federalist 45 that we'll talk about with the Federalism podcast later. But Federalist 39, I would say, is the clearest and most thorough and most systematic explanation of the ways in which the United States government is not a purely federal system, it's not a purely national system, it's a mixture and I would say from the perspective of today's politics, and it shows the importance of the United States being at least a partly federal system rather than a purely unitary or national one.
Speaker 1:All of that is in Federalist 39. I mean that's quite an argument by Madison. And can I ask we know for sure that Madison wrote this, because I know that some of the Federalist papers we're not really sure, but some of them we know for a fact that they wrote them. Dr Weinberg, again thank you so much for the explanation. I know you said a little bit more political science, but again it describes why we are who we are. Thank you so much for that explanation. I know you said a little bit more political science, but again it describes why we are who we are. Thank you.
