The Federalist Papers - Alexander Hamilton [338]
Federalist 36
p. 217. the frightful forms of odious and oppressivepoll taxes…: A poll tax is a capitation or "head" tax levied on every adult within a jurisdiction. As a compulsory measure, the poll tax is constitutionally permissible but outmoded. As a voluntary measure, enforced by conditioning voter registration upon payment of the tax, it is now illegal. In the early years of the republic, states replaced property qualifications with poll taxes, but by the Civil War, such restrictions on universal (male) suffrage had been abandoned. The poll tax reemerged as a technique of racial discrimination in the 1890s, but gradually fell from favor. The twenty-fourth Amendment (1964) and the Supreme Court case of Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966) finally outlawed the voluntary poll tax.
Federalist 37
p. 224. The precise extent of thecommon law, and the statute law, themaritime law…: As distinct from "statute law," "common law" consists of principles and rules derived rather from ancient custom, usage, and judicial precedent than from legislative enactment. With reference to the American legal system in the late 1780s, common law is the entirety of statutory and case law inherited from England and the American colonies prior to the American Revolution. Maritime law pertains specifically to marine commerce, navigation, shipping, and business transacted at or relating to the sea. It is also known as "admiralty law."
p. 225. The jurisdiction of her several courts…of law, ofequity…: "Equity" is a system of law that originated in appeals from the English common law courts to the high royal official known as the Lord Chancellor. The law of equity consisted of rules and procedures designed to supplement or, when necessary, to override the inflexible formulas and inadequate remedies of the common and statutory law. In the United States, under the Judiciary Act of 1789, legal and equitable jurisdictions were combined in the lower federal courts. Today, the jurisdictional distinction is all but superseded by the unitary "civil action." Nonetheless, such constitutionally vital remedies as the injunction and the declaratory judgment are still governed by the rules of equity.
p. 225. equivocal, until their meaning beliquidated…: Here, and elsewhere in The Federalist (e.g., No. 78, p. 467 and No. 82, p. 490), to "liquidate" means to clarify.
Federalist 38
p. 228. Minos…was the primitive founder of the government of Crete…: Minos was a legendary king of Crete, an island in the Aegean to the southeast of Greece. It was the center of the Bronze Age Minoan civilization (2500–1100 BC) and exerted a profound influence on the more primitive peoples of the eastern Mediterranean, including the Mycenaean Greeks described by Homer. Minos supposedly lived three generations before the Trojan War (roughly 1350 BC). According to one tradition, he was the son of Zeus and Europa, whom Zeus, in the form of a bull, had carried off from Tyre or Sidon. To the ancient Greeks generally(e.g. Homer, Hesiod, Strabo), Minos was the most royal of earthly kings. Together with his brother, Rhadamanthys, he gave the first laws to mankind and acted as judge of the living and the dead. In Attic legend, however, he was a cruel despot, demanding from Athens an annual tribute of seven youths to be sacrificed to the half-man, half-bull Minotaur.
p. 228. asZaleucuswas…: Perhaps the earliest lawgiver among the Greeks (c. 650 BC), Zaleucus was connected particularly with the Greek colonists of Locri in Italy. He was known (like Draco) for the severity of his laws which, although designed to pacify social unrest, were probably more aristocratic than those of the great Athenian reformer, Solon.
p. 228. of that ofthe Locrians: These were inhabitants of a Greek