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Federalist No. 16 Explained: You Can't Put a State in Jail
Everyone in seventeen eighty-seven could see the obvious fix for America's failing government: keep the Articles of Confederation, but give Congress the power to force states to obey. Federalist No. 16 is Alexander Hamilton's demolition of that idea — a step-by-step walkthrough of how the first attempt to coerce a state would turn into the war that ends the union. The way out is the Constitution's deepest design change: laws that reach individual people through courts, instead of laws that can only be enforced against states by armies. This episode follows that idea from a failed amendment…
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