circumstance, we consider how few there are who outlive the season
of intellectual vigor, and how improbable it is that any considerable
portion of the bench, whether more or less numerous, should be in such
a situation at the same time, we shall be ready to conclude that
limitations of this sort have little to recommend them. In a republic,
where fortunes are not affluent, and pensions not expedient, the
dismission of men from stations in which they have served their country
long and usefully, on which they depend for subsistence, and from which
it will be too late to resort to any other occupation for a livelihood,
ought to have some better apology to humanity than is to be found in the
imaginary danger of a superannuated bench.

PUBLIUS

1. Vide Constitution of Massachusetts, Chapter 2, Section 1, Article 13.

FEDERALIST No. 80

The Powers of the Judiciary

From McLEAN's Edition, New York. Wednesday, May 28, 1788.

HAMILTON

To the People of the State of New York:

TO JUDGE with accuracy of the proper extent of the federal judicature,
it will be necessary to consider, in the first place, what are its
proper objects.

It seems scarcely to admit of controversy, that the judiciary authority
of the Union ought to extend to these several descriptions of cases:
1st, to all those which arise out of the laws of the United States,
passed in pursuance of their just and constitutional powers of
legislation; 2d, to all those which concern the execution of the
provisions expressly contained in the articles of Union; 3d, to all
those in which the United States are a party; 4th, to all those which
involve the PEACE of the CONFEDERACY, whether they relate to the
intercourse between the United States and foreign nations, or to that
between the States themselves; 5th, to all those which originate on the
high seas, and are of admiralty or maritime jurisdiction; and, lastly,
to all those in which the State tribunals cannot be supposed to be
impartial and unbiased.

The first point depends upon this obvious consideration, that there
ought always to be a constitutional method of giving efficacy to
constitutional provisions. What, for instance, would avail restrictions
on the authority of the State legislatures, without some constitutional
mode of enforcing the observance of them? The States, by the plan of the
convention, are prohibited from doing a variety of things, some of which
are incompatible with the interests of