Alexander Hamilton is commonly seen as the standard-bearer of an
ideology-turned-political party, the Federalists, engaged in a
struggle for the soul of the young United States against the
Anti-Federalists, and later, the Jeffersonian Republicans.
Alexander Hamilton and the Development of American Law counters
such conventional wisdom with a new, more nuanced view of Hamilton
as a true federalist, rather than a one-dimensional nationalist,
whose most important influence on the American founding is his
legal legacy. In this analytical biography, Kate Elizabeth Brown
recasts our understanding of Hamilton’s political career, his
policy achievements, and his significant role in the American
founding by considering him first and foremost as a preeminent
lawyer who applied law and legal arguments to accomplish his
statecraft. In particular, Brown shows how Hamilton used inherited
English legal principles to accomplish his policy goals, and how
state and federal jurists adapted these Hamiltonian principles into
a distinct, republican jurisprudence throughout the nineteenth
century. When writing his authoritative commentary on the nature of
federal constitutional power in The Federalist, Hamilton juxtaposed
the British constitution with the new American one he helped to
create; when proposing commercial, monetary, banking,
administrative, or foreign policy in Washington’s cabinet, he
used legal arguments to justify his desired course of action. In
short, lawyering, legal innovation, and common law permeated
Alexander Hamilton’s professional career. Re-examining
Hamilton’s post-war accomplishments through the lens of law,
Brown demonstrates that Hamilton’s much-studied political career,
as well as his contributions to republican political science,
cannot be fully understood without recognizing and investigating
how Hamilton used Anglo-American legal principles to achieve these
ends. A critical re-evaluation of Hamilton’s legacy, as well as
his place in the founding era, Brown’s work also enhances and
refines our understanding of the nature and history of American
jurisprudence.
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