Something like the idea animating The Collective-Action Constitution—or a narrower, more implicit, and more intuitive version of it—has been around for a long time and has been articulated in many places. At the Philadelphia Convention and state ratifying conventions, and in public essays and private correspondence, Madison, Hamilton, Wilson, Washington, and other prominent nationalists emphasized both the need for federal power in cases of general interests, separate state incompetence, or regulatory disuniformity and the need to stop states from creating interstate problems. The Constitution was drafted and ratified primarily to achieve these goals, not to limit federal power or to protect state authority or individual liberty.
