Federalist No. 59
Federalist No. 59 is an essay by Alexander Hamilton, the fifty-ninth of The Federalist Papers. It was published on February 22, 1788, under the pseudonym Publius, the name under which all The Federalist Papers were published. This is the first of three papers discussing the power of Congress over the election of its own members, the other two papers in this series being Federalist No. 60 and Federalist No. 61. The title of the paper is "Concerning the Power of Congress to Regulate the Election of Members".
The Federalist Papers
Federal judges, when interpreting the Constitution, frequently use "The Federalist Papers" as a contemporary account of the intentions of the framers and ratifiers. They have been applied on issues ranging from the power of the federal government in foreign affairs (in "Hines v. Davidowitz") to the validity of ex post facto laws (in the 1798 decision "Calder v. Bull", apparently the first decision to mention "The Federalist"). , "The Federalist" had been quoted 291 times in Supreme Court decisions.