John Jay made contributions that have shaped the government of the United States today

John Jay thought there were problems with the way the nation was being administered. He, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton thought that a federal system of government, in which all the states of a nation would be under the supervision of a single government but retained their individual sovereignty, would make America much stronger. Together, they released numerous papers and studies to support this claim, which has since become a cornerstone of contemporary American government.

He claimed that the Articles of Confederation were an inadequate and ineffectual system of government in his "Address to the People of the State of New York, on the Subject of the Federal Constitution." Although John Jay was not present at the Constitutional Convention, he joined Hamilton and Madison in vehemently advocating for the establishment of a new and stronger, more centralized, yet fair structure of government.

In The Federalist Papers, a collection of eighty-five essays prepared to persuade New York state convention members to approve the proposed Constitution of the United States, they described their idea in writing under the collective pseudonym "Publius." The second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixty-fourth articles were all written by Jay.