A Letter to The New Republic on Epistemic Closure

 

re: Jess Coleman, The Supreme Court’s Originalists Are Cracking Up, TNR (July 7, 2026), <https://newrepublic.com/article/212556/supreme-court-originalism-trump-barbara>. 

In Trump v. Slaughter (2026), the U.S. Supreme Court’s majority opinion announced: “[I]n Federalist No. 77, Hamilton said that the Senate’s consent ‘would be necessary to displace as well as to appoint,’ but it remains a subject of scholarly debate whether Hamilton meant ‘displace’ in the sense of ‘remove’ or ‘replace.’” Jess Coleman objects. Coleman affirms the correctness of the ‘displace’-means-‘remove’ position, and he announces that the contrary position is ‘bizarre.’ 

I have argued in academic journals since 2010, that is, long before Trump entered politics, that Hamilton’s ‘displace’-language means ‘replace’ and not ‘remove.’ Those who argue that ‘displace’ means ‘remove’ tend to clip only one sentence from Federalist No. 77, but if you read the entire paragraph in which that sentence appears, you will see that the discussion is better understood as involving replacing officers, as opposed to simply removing them. See <The Avalon Project : Federalist No 77>. 

Furthermore, in his celebrated Commentaries on the Constitution, Joseph Story affirmed that Hamilton’s ‘displace’-language was about replacing, as opposed to removing, officers. See <THE NEW REFORM CLUB: Strained (and Sloppy) Readings of the Constitution and Strained (and Sloppy) Readings of Hamilton’s Federalist No. 77 (Updated)>. More recently, it has come to light that, in his private correspondence to Senator Webster, Chancellor James Kent affirmed that Hamilton’s ‘displace’-language was speaking to replacing, as opposed to removing, officers. See <https://reason.com/volokh/2025/11/20/chancellor-james-kent-on-hamiltons-federalist-no-77-and-modern-academic-commentary/>. 

Whether Hamilton’s ‘displace’-language was speaking to replacing officers or to removing officers is a matter about which reasonable persons have and can disagree. Coleman’s suggesting that one of these two views is ‘bizarre’ speaks to an unfortunate epistemic closure prevalent among far too many who would seek to guide and explain the world to others. By contrast, when the Slaughter Court cautiously recognized the long-standing historical dispute about the meaning of Federalist No. 77 and the Court’s majority actively chose not to inject itself into that debate, the Court acted in the sort of cautious manner that we should applaud, and not object. 

Sincerely, 

Seth Barrett Tillman, Associate Professor

Seth Barrett Tillman, ‘A Letter to The New Republic on Epistemic Closure,’ New Reform Club (July 17, 2026, 5:36 AM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2026/07/a-letter-to-new-republic-on-epistemic.html>.