Federalism

Ever wonder what level of government, state or federal, the Founders (which I'll define here as people who actually signed the Constitution) went into after the Constitution went into effect? I did so I spent some time on this rainy afternoon looking through the National Archives website.

Here's a summary of the post-ratification governmental service of all 40 signers of the Constitution:

Signer	Level of Office Held	Office(s)
George Washington	Federal	President
James Madison	Federal	Congressman, President
Alexander Hamilton	Federal	Secretary of the Treasury
Robert Morris	Federal	Senator
James Wilson	Federal	Supreme Court Justice
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney	Federal	Minister to France
Pierce Butler	Federal	Senator
Roger Sherman	Federal	Congressman, Senator
William Samuel Johnson	Federal	Senator
John Blair	Federal	Supreme Court Justice
Hugh Williamson	Federal	Congressman
Rufus King	Federal	Senator, Director of First Bank of the United States, Minister to Great Britain
Daniel Carroll	Federal	Congressman
Abraham Baldwin	Federal	Congressman, Senator
Thomas Fitzsimons	Federal	Congressman
George Clymer	Federal	Congressman
Gouverneur Morris	Both	Minister to France, U.S. Senator, Chairman of the Erie Canal Commission
Charles Pinckney	Both	State legislator, Governor, Minister to Spain, U.S. Congressman
John Rutledge	Both	State Supreme Court Justice, U.S. Supreme Court Justice
James McHenry	Both	State legislator, U.S. Secretary of War
George Read	Both	U.S. Senator, State Supreme Court justice
Richard Bassett	Both	U.S. Senator, state judge, Governor
Richard Dobbs Spaight	Both	Govenor, U.S. Congressman, state legislator
William Blount	Both	Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Southern Department, U.S. Senator, state legislator
Jonathan Dayton	Both	State legislator, U.S. Congressman
William Few	Both	U.S. Senator, federal judge, state legislator, U.S. Commissioner of Loans
John Langdon	Both	U.S. Senator, state legislator, Governor
Nicholas Gilman	Both	State legislator, state treasurer, U.S. Congressman, U.S. Senator, Bankruptcy Commissioner
William Paterson	Both	U.S. Senator, Governor, federal judge
Gunning Bedford, Jr.	Both	State Attorney General, federal judge
Thomas Mifflin	State	State legislator, Governor
William Livingston	State	Governor
Jared Ingersoll	State	Various
David Brearly	None	None
John Dickinson	None	None
Benjamin Franklin	None	None
Jacob Broom	None	None
Nathaniel Gorham	None	None
Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer	None	None
William Jackson	None	None

Of the Founders, 16 held positions only in the federal government, 14 held offices at both the state and federal level, 7 didn't hold any future public office, and 3 held office only at the state level (although in the case of William Livingston he was already governor of New Jersey and died two years after ratification).

No argument, just an observation.

Who are you to judge?

It's always a good rule of thumb to think through the implications of your arguments. I recently saw an argument against the individual mandate in the health care bill that essentially boiled down to a refusal to accept judicial precedents if the speaker deems that they don't follow from the Constitution. So while the arguments for the constitutionality of the individual mandate (i.e., 1) the general taxation power of Congress, 2) the commerce clause, and 3) the necessary and proper clause) can be argued based on precedents combined with other precedents, someone might obstinately declare that it doesn't matter. Those precedents are the work of activist courts, don't have a basis in the Constitution, and should be ignored or overturned. As such, the argument goes, the Supreme Court should overturn the individual mandate, and perhaps more of the health reform law, as well.

Airtight, until you remember that judicial review itself is a precedent and doesn't actually appear in the Constitution.