SOURCE: Koch, Adrienne. “Justice.” In Madison's “Advice to My Country,” pp. 53-99. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966.

In the following essay, Koch refutes the negative critical reputation accorded Madison throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and considers the concept of justice as the ultimate goal of Madison's political philosophy.

Inadequate humanistic scholarship in America has done Madison a great disservice. I make this judgment sadly, and reserve from the generalization two recent works—the Hutchinson edition of the Papers of James Madison, now in progress, and Irving Brant's six-volume biography Madison. But it is difficult to escape the judgment that for over a century since his death, Madison has not received due recognition for his immense contributions to American history and thought.

Now, one reason we have been generally tendered an abstraction or a bitter caricature in place of the man has been partly the result...