SCOTUSblog on camera: Jeffrey Rosen (Part two)

“We all as citizens have an obligation to educate ourselves about the Supreme Court, about the Constitution, so that we can participate in the great conversation that is the Constitution.”

Jeffrey Rosen is president and CEO of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, as well as a law professor at the George Washington University Law School, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a legal journalist and author. He is a graduate of Yale Law School, Oxford University (where he was a Marshall Scholar), and Harvard College.

In this five-part interview, Rosen discusses his background and his work at the National Constitution Center; the importance and accessibility of our founding documents; the Constitution, historical understanding and facing new technological questions; admiring Justice Louis D. Brandeis; and exhorting citizens to explore constitutional – rather than political – questions.

Part two: Documents

“You cannot connect to the Constitution without stories . . . the Supreme Court tells these stories.”

The relevance of historical documents to understanding law; Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., warning against citing the Magna Carta in Supreme Court oral argument; how a citizen may relate the text of a document seen at the National Constitution Center to the decisions the Supreme Court issues about the words and ideas those documents contain; and a practical discussion of understanding the Fourth Amendment, the history of writs of assistance and searching a cellphone.

(Fabrizio di Piazza)