The document discusses Federalist No. 10 and the concepts of factions, majority rule, and representative democracy as described by James Madison. It then discusses other presidents setting precedents, including Washington establishing precedents, Lincoln taking extraordinary actions during the Civil War that expanded presidential power, and FDR addressing the Great Depression through the New Deal and court packing plan. The document raises questions about when it is appropriate for a president to take on more power during a crisis.

1. Federalist No. 10 and More
Presidents’ Precedents
Take out Lesson 4 and 5 packets

2. FIRST . . .
 Finish reading and analyzing Federalist No. 10
 What is a faction?
 What are the dangers of factions?
 Where do factions originate from?
 What is Madison’s solution?
 Read primary source and summary/analysis
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Db2oxalDvM&feature=r
elated

3. Federalist No. 10
 Madison defines a faction as "a number of
citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority
of the whole, who are united and actuated by some
common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to
the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and
aggregate interests of the community”
 He identifies the most serious source of faction to be
the diversity of opinion in political life which leads to
dispute over fundamental issues such as what regime
or religion should be preferred.
 However, he thinks that "the most common and
durable source of factions has been the various and
unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and
those who are without property have ever formed
distinct interests in society"

4. Federalist No. 10
 He saw direct democracy as a danger to
individual rights and advocated a representative
democracy in order to protect what he viewed as
individual liberty from majority rule, or from the
effects of such inequality within society.
 He says, "A pure democracy can admit no cure
for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or
interest will be felt by a majority, and there is
nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the
weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies have
ever been found incompatible with personal
security or the rights of property; and have, in
general, been as short in their lives as they have
been violent in their deaths"

5. Federalist No. 10
 Madison first assessed that there are two ways to limit
the damage caused by faction: either remove the
causes of faction or control its effects
 Creating a society homogeneous in opinions and
interests, is impracticable
 He then argues that the only problem comes from
majority factions because the principle of popular
sovereignty should prevent minority factions from
gaining power
 Madison concludes that a small democracy cannot
avoid the dangers of majority faction because small
size means that undesirable passions can very easily
spread to a majority of the people, which can then
enact its will through the democratic government
without difficulty.

6. Federalist No. 10
 Madison states, "The latent causes of faction are
thus sown in the nature of man", so the cure is to
control their effects. He makes an argument on
how this is not possible in a pure democracy but
possible in a republic.
 With pure democracy he means a system in
which every citizen votes directly for laws, and
with republic he intends a society in which
citizens vote for an elite of representatives who
then vote for laws.
 The authors wanted a republic diverse enough to
prevent faction but with enough commonality to
maintain cohesion among the states

7. NEXT . . .
 Look at other President’s Precedents
 Review Washington’s precedents
 LIST
 Lincoln and FDR

8. Other Presidents’ Precedents
 Vigilance and Responsibility
 2 necessary virtues
 Vigilance represents the need for the people to check the
power
 Responsibility represents the judgment of those in power to
make decisions
 Need for balance
 If vigilance gets out of control, it incapacitates the
government, preventing it from doing anything
 If those in power take too much, they can run amuck
 Hamilton felt the government should be granted
more power to achieve a necessary end

9. Lincoln
 Lincoln took liberties with his role during the Civil
War
 No president had ever encountered such a
crisis, so Lincoln set a precedent of taking more
power to solve the crisis
 Declared martial law
 Suspended habeas corpus
 Blockaded southern ports
 Shut down opposition newspapers
 Sent federal troops to arrest Americans
 Freed the slaves
 Lincoln took extra-Constitutional steps to save the Union

10. Lincoln a Dictator???
 If he was, he was like no other dictator in history
 Dictatorship is characterized by
unlimited, absolute power exercised in arbitrary
and unpredictable ways
 Lincoln still respected legal limits, listened to the
will of the people, and risked being voted out of
office
 Lincoln believed his actions were within his duty
as President seeing as no one had ever had to
deal with a succession

11. Was the Great Depression a Time for
Presidential Power???
 FDR faced a crisis during his Presidency
 His plan to save the country from the Great
Depression was to pass the New Deal, a series of
economic programs implemented in the United
States between 1933 and 1936.
 However, he needed to “pack” the Supreme Court
to do so
 In the end, the New Deal provided 4 million
Americans with jobs in 1 year
 Calls into question, how involved our government
should be?
 How weak should the Supreme Court and Congress
be?

12. Response/Discussion
 You have the option of participating in a
discussion or writing a 2 paragraph response
 If you do not write the response, you must
PARTICIPATE in the discussion (ie talk more than
once, contribute topical, well thought out
information)
 Questions (you may address any in your
response)
 Do you agree or disagree with Madison reguarding
the dangers of factions?
 When should we as American suspend vigilance
and allow a President to take on more power to
solve a crisis? Or should we never allow this?