Historians, political scientists, and philosophers are sometimes more sanguine than lawyers

And perhaps more honest as well as more candid.

Pauline Maier, Ratification, 2010.

Introduction, 

. . . Readers who want a careful analysis of The Federalist, for example, will have to go elsewhere.

Except for the state of New York, it was less influential in 1787 and 1788 than in later times, when it was too often read as if it were a dispassionate, objective analysis of the Constitution, not a partisan statement written in the midst of a desperate fight in a critical state.

She seems to think there is such a thing.

Fair enough.