Citations to the Federalist by The Supreme Court

Sorry I have been away. I am teaching a three week course, five days a week. Trying to teach Civil Liberties and Civil Rights to undergrads is never easy and this - well, that is best left for another topic. I want to briefly mention a paper that I along with two colleagues, Mike Evans, in my department, and Pam Corley of Southern Methodist University, will present at the upcoming Law and Society Association meeting in Hawaii (still another topic). Several scholars argued that there was an increased citation and use of The Federalist by Liberal justices and that in fact liberals use it more than conservatives. We found that is was true, but only for about a ten year period - from 1996 to about 2006, and that it was driven by Souter and Stevens, who have both departed. Kagan and Sotomayor rarely cite the Federalist, while Roberts was intitially reluctant, but now cites the Federalist frequently. The bottom line - if you think of citing the Federalist as the use of Originalism, once again conservative justices are using the approach more than liberal justices.