In Federalist Paper Number 78, Alexander Hamilton famously contended that the judiciary would be “the least dangerous” of the three branches of US government, because “it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure” the political rights provided by the Constitution. The executive branch “holds the sword of the community”, he explained. And the legislative “prescribe the rules” regulating the rights and duties of citizens. The judiciary, on the other hand, “has no influence over … the sword”. It “can take no active resolution” because it has neither “force nor will, but merely judgement”. This is because the “proper and peculiar province” of the judiciary is “the interpretation of the laws”.