At Constitution Center, focus on civil discourse reaping rewards

Jeffrey Rosen, author, constitutional law professor, and president and chief executive officer of the National Constitution Center, may have hit upon a novel idea.

At a time when public debate over the central constitutional and political issues of the day has devolved into a dispiriting swamp of  ad hominem attacks, misleading ad campaigns, and television shouting matches, Rosen says there is a public hunger for civilized, respectful conversation.

Since taking over at the center last year, he has organized a series of public forums featuring prominent guests from the political right and left to unravel weighty and emotional issues, from gun control to the use of drone strikes, within the context of constitutional law.

Give Rosen half a chance and he waxes rhapsodic about the nation's founding documents. "It is important in these polarized times for there to be a place where people can engage in constitutional conversations," he said. "This defines who we are as Americans. It is thrilling to see that people who disagree on everything else agree that we are defined by these documents."

In the last year, audiences have packed the center to hear from Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, lawyers Theodore Olson and David Boies, who launched a campaign to legalize same-sex marriage, and Alan Gura, who has argued for an expansive interpretation of the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

Although there was a drop in overall visitor traffic, possibly due to bad winter weather, attendance at these "town hall" programs more than tripled, from just over 2,000 to 6,779 in his first year, and Rosen is gaining attention for his efforts. That and improved finances - he's more than doubled fund-raising from $11 million to just under $24 million this year - have created the sense the National Constitution Center is infused with new energy and purpose.

No less an eminence than Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says Rosen has set a dignified tone, an antidote to the pervasive atmosphere of recrimination and contempt.

"It is this idea that people who disagree can respect each other and debate their different positions," said Ginsburg, who has known Rosen since she was a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Rosen was a law clerk there. "People think it is inevitable that Republicans and Democrats are as divided as they are, but it is not."

In an interview, Ginsburg recalled her biggest supporter in her confirmation hearings was conservative Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R., Utah), despite her long affiliation with the American Civil Liberties Union.

"Today, he would be afraid to vote for me," she said.

It has helped that Rosen has been able to lure some very big names. In January, Gates selected the center for one of a handful of public appearances to discuss his book on his years as a cabinet official with Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Several months earlier, Ginsburg came to the center for a long conversation with Rosen that included revealing accounts of the give-and-take among the justices.

Doug DeVos, president of Amway and the center's executive committee chairman, said that it was not only Rosen's background as a constitutional scholar and journalist but also his ability to bring in old friends such as Ginsburg that made him the right fit. No longer would the center have to rely on puzzling events, as it did with an exhibition on Bruce Springsteen a few years ago.

"He has a network and knows the people who have a knowledge and passion about the Constitution," DeVos said of Rosen. "He had the skills to engage people in conversation, and really that was the piece that set him apart. He doesn't do it in a way that says: 'Hey, I am really smart. Let me tell you everything I know. It's more like, 'Let's talk.' "

As a Yale law student, Rosen decided early on that he would rather write about the law than practice it. In 1992, he was named legal affairs editor of the New Republic, a dream job - two previous legal affairs columnists were Felix Frankfurter, a Supreme Court justice, and Learned Hand, a revered jurist and legal theoretician who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York. Rosen soon found himself interviewing members of the Supreme Court and scrambling to establish the magazine's constitutional voice.

"I was 28 years old and filled with hope and big plans," Rosen said. "I was there and I was cheap, just enough to get the poverty rate at the Y, so I jumped at the chance."

In his writings, Rosen espouses a theory of judicial restraint brought to early fruition by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, one of his heroes. Brandeis' approach was that it is generally a bad idea to second-guess democratic decisionmaking by legislatures, unless core constitutional rights have been breached.

Rosen sees a bright line on protecting privacy rights, and had been outspoken in his criticism of the National Security Agency's metadata collection and surveillance of U.S citizens.

At the same time, he is skeptical of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision granting women the right to have abortions, and legal gospel in some circles. Rosen is ardently supportive of abortion rights but concluded, as did Ginsburg, that the case was incorrectly reasoned.

Rosen, who is married and the father of twin 8-year-old boys, divides his time between Washington and Philadelphia, where he shares a Center City house with former Obama administration official Ezekiel Emanuel, now a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Rosen loves to ski, making his work as an occasional moderator at the Aspen Institute all the more enjoyable, and professes a modest ability as a pianist, losing himself from time to time on the concert pianos at the Curtis Institute, where he goes to practice (Schumann's Papillons has been a great challenge, he says). He is on leave from his position as a professor of constitutional law at George Washington University.

But Rosen seems to love nothing more than conversation about constitutional law. His style is polite and distinctly nonideological, aimed at eliciting core views of his guests, and giving them the opportunity to make their case. The point is the conversation, Rosen says, not who wins or loses.

"We've had one or two experiences with visiting moderators who viewed themselves as trial lawyers, playing 'gotcha,' and it was painful. It doesn't work," he said. "You are supposed to let the [panelist] speak for himself or herself and ask questions that allow them to do that.

"The more I do this, I find myself less interested in my own views and more interested in what other people have to say."