During the Constitutional Convention and state ratification conventions, the judiciary was the least discussed branch of the national government. From a design perspective, almost all of the debate and alarm seemed to have been focused on the executive and the legislature. The simplest explanation is that the judiciary was familiar and non-controversial. Hamilton wrote in Federalist 78, “[T]he judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.”
