After the Philadelphia Convention proposed a new constitution for the United States in 1787, advocates of the proposed constitution worked to persuade the public that it was worth ratifying. The essays in the Federalist Papers, authored primarily by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton under the pseudonym of Publius, made the case for the Constitution.

Constitutions answer basic questions about who rules and to what ends. Looking at the U.S. Constitution through this lens helps us frame the question that will guide us the rest of the semester: "What is the Constitution"?