The Federalist Papers are treated across several episodes of The Bob Zadek Show as both a historical artifact of the ratification debate and a live question in constitutional interpretation. Guests and host disagree about what the Papers are evidence of: whether they record the Framers’ understanding of the Constitution they had drafted, or whether they were written to persuade a single state and should be read with skepticism. Bob Zadek states that on the day in 1788 the first Federalist Paper was published, describing the Papers as 85 op-ed pieces written by Madison, Jay, and Hamilton in New York in order to persuade New York to vote for ratification of the Constitution Robert Alt of the Buckeye Institute: Power to the States (2017).
What the Papers are
Zadek characterizes the Federalist Papers as “85 basically op-ed pieces” produced for a specific audience rather than as a disinterested exposition of constitutional meaning. He argues that their frequent citation as evidence of what the founders meant is misplaced, and reports that the National Constitution Center’s daily blog identified the Papers as essentially a public relations campaign. In his account they are not legislative history but “articles of persuasion” Robert Alt of the Buckeye Institute: Power to the States (2017).
Frank H. Buckley makes a related point about the physical limits under which the Papers circulated. He notes that the roads of America at the time were worse than the Roman roads of 2,000 years before, and that the Federalist Papers never really got outside of New York during the ratification debate [[episodes/f_h__buckley_on__the_republic_of_virtue|F.H. Buckley on The Republic of Virtue (2017)]]. Zadek agrees that nobody cared very much that people in other colonies read them, because the audience was specific [[episodes/f_h__buckley_on__the_republic_of_virtue|F.H. Buckley on The Republic of Virtue (2017)]].
The Papers as a source of meaning
In a discussion of judicial review, Ilya Somin treats the Federalist Papers as evidence of how the founding fathers understood the courts. He says that James Madison wrote in the Papers that the courts would be the arbiters of disagreements over the relative scope of powers between the states and the federal government, and argues it would make no sense to say the courts will decide those issues if the states and the federal government were not required to obey the court’s decision How to Create a Legitimacy Crisis (2019). This places the Papers in a different role from the one Zadek assigns them: not a campaign document to be discounted, but a record of founding-era expectation about who resolves constitutional disputes.
The Federalists and the Anti-Federalists
William Watkins Jr. frames ratification as a contest between two factions — the Federalists who supported the newly drafted Constitution and the Anti-Federalists who opposed it — and argues that history vindicates the opponents. He proposes running a tally like a scoreboard: read the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, compare the Federalists’ promises that certain clauses would confer no really new powers on the national government with the Anti-Federalists’ predictions about what those provisions would actually do, and it becomes clear that the Anti-Federalists were correct [[episodes/crossroads_for_liberty__with_william_watkins_jr|Crossroads for Liberty with William Watkins Jr. (2017)]].
Watkins specifies the clauses at issue. He says the Anti-Federalists predicted over and over how the national government would likely abuse the General Welfare clause at the beginning of Congress’s enumerated powers, the Necessary and Proper clause at the end of those powers, and the Commerce clause, which he says has today become a sort of universal jurisdiction for the national government over many matters. He adds that they predicted the treaty power could be used to undermine the rights of the people and the states [[episodes/crossroads_for_liberty__with_william_watkins_jr|Crossroads for Liberty with William Watkins Jr. (2017)]].
Zadek presses the question of whether the Federalists knew they were selling something other than what was promised, or simply did not understand what they were doing as well as the Anti-Federalists did. He asks listeners to read The Anti-Federalist Papers, a collection of essays by those who opposed the Constitution, and says their dire predictions — about the king-like power of the president and the reach of the federal government into everyday lives — all happened, and that the Anti-Federalists got it right [[episodes/crossroads_for_liberty__with_william_watkins_jr|Crossroads for Liberty with William Watkins Jr. (2017)]]. He names Madison, Hamilton, Jay, and Washington among the Federalists, noting that Washington did not speak out much, and says they got it wrong in terms of their promises.
Madison’s notes and the founding generation
In a separate episode, Zadek credits James Madison with reconstructing the Constitutional Convention debates. He says Madison was the man most instrumental at the Convention — not the “Father of the Constitution” as most Americans believe, but certainly very influential — and that although he was not the secretary of the Convention, every night after the long debates he went back to his room and from memory and from notes reconstructed the debates, often verbatim. Zadek says Madison kept that book secret for many years so the country would not be affected by the debates, and that much later in his life they were released to the public, becoming one of the crucial source documents for understanding the debates Has America Become an “Elective Monarchy”? (2014).
Frank H. Buckley, in the same episode, ranks the Framers’ own debates above the Federalist Papers as reading on the structure of liberty, saying their debates are the most fascinating set of readings on that subject and that the collection cannot be beat anywhere else, not even the Federalist Papers Has America Become an “Elective Monarchy”? (2014). He calls the Framers the most brilliant people, possessed not merely of brilliance but of a political sense and practical reason a mere theoretician would not have, and expresses thanks that they were not academics.
Across episodes: the same text, two roles
The recurring question across these episodes is what the Federalist Papers are good for. In the 2017 episode with Watkins, they function as the Federalists’ promise-book, to be checked against the Anti-Federalists’ predictions and found wanting [[episodes/crossroads_for_liberty__with_william_watkins_jr|Crossroads for Liberty with William Watkins Jr. (2017)]]. In the 2017 episode with Robert Alt, Zadek uses the anniversary of the first Paper’s publication to warn that citing the Papers as evidence of founder intent is misplaced, since they were written to persuade New York Robert Alt of the Buckeye Institute: Power to the States (2017). In the 2017 Buckley episode, the same point is reinforced by the observation that poor roads kept the Papers from circulating outside New York [[episodes/f_h__buckley_on__the_republic_of_virtue|F.H. Buckley on The Republic of Virtue (2017)]]. In the 2019 episode with Somin, by contrast, the Papers are invoked affirmatively as a statement of founding-era understanding about judicial review How to Create a Legitimacy Crisis (2019). The treatment does not resolve into a single trajectory: what changes between episodes is the use to which the Papers are put, with Watkins and Zadek treating them as unreliable advocacy and Somin treating them as probative of original understanding. The 2014 Buckley episode adds a related but distinct claim — that the Convention debates themselves, preserved in Madison’s notes, outrank the Papers as a source Has America Become an “Elective Monarchy”? (2014).
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not describe the individual essays of the Federalist Papers, their authorship attributions beyond the names Madison, Jay, and Hamilton, or any specific number among the 85. They do not state what any court has held about the Papers’ authority, nor supply the text of the General Welfare, Necessary and Proper, or Commerce clauses. The excerpts also break off mid-exchange in several places, leaving questions Zadek posed to his guests unanswered in the available material.