About this episode
Alexander Hamilton's Federalist No. 83 defends the proposed federal Constitution against a specific charge: that it does not guarantee trial by jury in civil cases. His answer runs to nearly an hour — a defence of institutional design, of why structure and jurisdiction are separate questions, and of why the absence of a thing in a document is not the same as its abolition.
The essay reads today like a brief on the design of dispute resolution: how does a system of many rules and many venues stay legible? What does modest damage look like when a platform is not directly involved?
Chapters
- 0:00 — The trial-by-jury question
- 9:00 — Distinct from the state courts
- 18:00 — Anti-Federalist objections
- 27:00 — Constitutional silence vs. abolition
- 36:00 — Design of dispute resolution
- 45:00 — Modern platform juries?
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