In everything Robert Yates was an anti-Federalist. He dressed like one and he talked like one. He had been an opponent of the Federal Constitution, an advocate of the doctrine of state supremacy, and an ardent supporter of the Governor. With Clinton's approval he had withdrawn from the Philadelphia convention when the majority favoured a strong government wielding supreme authority; with Clinton's approval, he had opposed the ratification of the Federal Constitution in the state convention at Poughkeepsie, and with Clinton's approval he declined to change his vote, although New Hampshire's action and Hamilton's speech had already settled the question of ratification. What Hamilton proposed, Yates opposed; what Clinton advocated, Yates approved. After the ratification of the Constitution, however, Robert Yates charged the grand jury that it would be little short of treason against the Republic to disobey it. "Let me exhort you, gentlemen," he said, "not only in your capacity as grand jurors, but in your more durable and equally respectable character as citizens, to preserve inviolate this charter of our national rights and safety, a charter second only in dignity and importance to the Declaration of our Independence." Upon the bench Yates distinguished himself for impartiality and independence, if not for learning. He abated the intemperate zeal of patriotic juries, and he refused to convict men suspected of disloyalty, without proof. On one occasion he sent a jury back four times to reconsider a verdict of guilty unauthorised by the evidence, and subsequently treated with indifference a legislative threat of impeachment, based upon a fearless discharge of duty. He could afford to be just, for, like George Clinton, he had early embraced the cause of the Colony against the Crown. From an Albany alderman he became a maker of the State Constitution, and from a writer of patriotic essays, he shone as an active member of the Committee of Safety. Together with John Jay and Robert R. Livingston, he had obstructed the passage of Lord Howe's ships up the Hudson, and with General Schuyler he devised measures to repel the British from the northern and western frontier. He had helped to fix the dividing line between Massachusetts and New York, and, as one of the Council of Administration, he governed southern New York from the withdrawal of the British until the assembling of the Legislature.