Hamilton, Alexander (b. Nevis, British West Indies, 11 Jan. 1757; d. New York, N.Y. 12 July 1804), lawyer and statesman. Though best known for his achievements as the first secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton contributed significantly to the establishment and interpretation of the Constitution. He, along with James
Madison and John Dickinson, parlayed the 1786 Annapolis commercial convention into the Constitutional Convention of 1787. He attended the latter as a delegate from New York and signed the finished document. He wrote well over half of the celebrated Federalist Papers, including those essays analyzing the federal judiciary, and in no. 78 he formulated the definitive justification of
judicial review. In 1788 he also led the successful campaign for the Constitution's ratification in New York.
Early in 1791 President George
Washington asked Hamilton for an opinion on the proposed Bank of the United States, and Hamilton responded with the classical statement of loose construction: “If the end be clearly comprehended within any of the specified powers, & if the measure have an obvious relation to that end, and is not forbidden by any particular provision of the constitution—it may safely be deemed to come within the compass of the national authority” (McDonald, 1979, p. 207). That doctrine prevailed throughout the Supreme Court tenure of Chief Justice John
Marshall; indeed, Marshall's opinion in
McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) reflected Hamilton's logic and echoed his words.
After he retired from the Treasury to resume private law practice in 1795, Hamilton became involved in a major Supreme Court case. Virginians challenged the federal carriage tax of 1794 as a direct tax not proportioned among the states according to population as required by Article I, section 2. Hamilton, on request of Attorney General William Bradford, argued the case for the government and persuaded the Court that the carriage tax was an excise tax needing only to be uniform throughout the states. This case,
Hylton v. United States (1796), was the first in which the Supreme Court ruled upon the constitutionality of an act of Congress.
In that same year Hamilton wrote an advisory legal opinion that influenced another major decision. After the Georgia legislature canceled its Yazoo land grants, investors requested Hamilton's legal opinion. He argued that the
Contract Clause applied to
contracts between a state and individuals as well as between individuals. Grants being contracts, Georgia's rescinding act was unconstitutional. When litigation reached the Supreme Court in
Fletcher v. Peck (1810), the Court followed Hamilton's reasoning.
One of Hamilton's last cases, argued before the Supreme Court of New York, was pivotal to freedom of speech. Under the
common law, truth was not a defense in cases of
seditious libel. In
Croswell v. People (1804), Hamilton argued that truth should be a defense. He lost the case but swayed those members of the state legislature who heard him. They soon enacted his position into law, thus establishing a legal foundation for the ideal of a free and responsible press (see
Speech and the Press).
See also
Constitutional Interpretation.
Bibliography
Forrest McDonald , Alexander Hamilton (1979).
Forrest McDonald
