ABSTRACT
One of the most impressive signals of the Federalists' triumph is the manner in which their constitution has come to dominate the very rhetoric of constitutionalism. This is particularly the case in the United States, where the federal Constitution has the status of what might be called the "plain vanilla" brand—a standard by which we understand and judge other constitutions, as, for example, those of states and localities. Without question, there are innumerable ambiguities in the Federalists' plain vanilla constitutional model, and there always have been. Without question too, there have been quite far-ranging attacks on the original plain vanilla model and departures from it as well. The plain vanilla constitution of the Federalists, like the centralizing efforts of European monarchs, broke with the older vision of an ancient constitution, in which the regime was composed of a multiplicity of "cogoverning" established bodies.
