Robert Yates(?), a non-signing Delegate to the Constitutional Convention, using the penname “Brutus,” publishes an anti-federalist essay, warning that the powers proposed for the judiciary are vague, ill-defined and could lead to judicial tyranny. In paragraphs two and three he writes,
I conceive the clause which extends the power of the judicial to controversies arising between a state and citizens of another state, improper in itself, and will, in its exercise, prove most pernicious and destructive.
It is improper, because it subjects a state to answer in a court of law, to the suit of an individual. This is humiliating and degrading to a government, and, what I believe, the supreme authority of no state ever submitted to.
NOTE: Although the identity of “Brutus” is not known for sure, many scholars believe him to have been Robert Yates, an Associate Justice of the New York Supreme Court.
[restored 10/4/2021]
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References:
Murray Dry, The Anti-Federalist: An abridgement, from The Complete Anti-Federalist by Herbert J. Storing, ed., (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 172-74.
Brutus XIV
www.infoplease.com/primary-sources/government/anti-federalist-papers/brutus-xiv
The Prophetic Antifederalists | Mises Institute
mises.org/library/prophetic-antifederalists
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