"I got to work at the New Republic the old fashioned way," said its legal affairs editor and this year's Constitution Day speaker Jeffrey Rosen. "I went to college with the editor. So I'm the Harriet Miers of legal journalism."
Rosen, who is charmingly self-effacing, is a professor at the George Washington University Law School. He attended Harvard, Oxford and finally Yale Law School, when he interned at the New Republic and got to work with Andrew Sullivan, then-editor of the prestigious publication.
He delivered an address Tuesday night as the second part of Hopkins' Constitution Day forum, which was kicked off by professor of political science Joel Grossman at a colloquium on Monday, the anniversary of the ratification of the Constitution.
"I came here because Professor Grossman was kind enough to invite me," Rosen said. "I was honored because it's a great university and a wonderful place to talk about the Constitution."
While at Hopkins, Rosen revealed that the most senior Associate Justice on the Supreme Court, John Paul Stevens, recently granted him an interview for an article set to appear in the New York Times Magazine this Sunday.
"I contacted him," Rosen said. "I just wrote to him out of the blue, and after a few weeks he wrote back and I went in not knowing what to expect and suddenly he announced that he was ready to grant the interview. So I was surprised and delighted and very excited about the way it turned out."
Always modest, Rosen stressed that Stevens' reason for consenting to an interview was not related to Rosen's position as arguably the most influential legal journalist today.
"I think it was obviously not me but just the New York Times Magazine," he said, "which was willing to devote a lot of space to (Stevens), and it's a great platform, so he thought that would be a great place to talk about his legacy."
Rosen's favorite thing is "writing - and having people read and respond to the articles." Still his "love of teaching" is not to be underestimated, and there's a reason why this extremely accomplished legal journalist has chosen to remain a professor of law, which, along with a career in journalism, was one of his long-term goals.
"I love teaching, both in the classroom and in being able to talk to colleagues about all of these interesting issues," he said.
"(Legal) teaching is one of the best jobs in the world - you have tremendous freedom. I can work at home most of the time and spend time with my lovely wife and kids, and you set your own hours, and nothing beats tenure."
According to Grossman, Hopkins briefly considered establishing a law school in the 1970s. Clearly that idea never came to fruition. Nonetheless Rosen believes Hopkins has a significant "role" in answering some key legal questions of the 21st century.
"It has a wonderful role to play, with such a distinguished political science faculty and department of Arts and Sciences generally," he said.
"It's able to promote conversations about Constitutional issues that transcend legalistic debate, and Constitutional debate isn't legalistic - it's about fundamental principles - so the kind of discussions that Professor Grossman is promoting are both extremely useful and very well-suited to a place like Johns Hopkins."
"In some ways, it can do even better than a place with a law school can, because it's going to take the Constitution back from the lawyers," he said.
At the question-and-answer session following the lecture, one student asked Rosen whether or not Justice Kennedy was unhappy with Rosen's June 18, 2007 article in the New Republic entitled, "Supreme Leader: The arrogance of Justice Anthony Kennedy."
Through the grapevine, Rosen had heard that Kennedy was not pleased, and mentioned the great deal of both positive and negative feedback he'd gotten from others. Still he described his reasons for writing the piece that he must have known would upset the Court's current swing vote.
"I couldn't help myself - I just had to get it off my chest," said Rosen, who later in his speech complimented Kennedy for being in line with the general public on most issues, at least "for the moment."
Since 2004 federal law has required any school that receives federal funds - of which Hopkins certainly qualifies - to have Constitution Day programming.
While some schools or institutions merely comply with the letter of the law and go no further, Grossman decided to turn the event into something special - and he has.
"Last year, we had this fellow Sanford Levinson, who's a law professor at (the University of) Texas, who'd just written a book ... called Our Undemocratic Constitution," said Grossman, who also asked Rosen to come speak at this year's event.
Grossman also has an even more ambitious vision for the future.
"I would like to see this become an annual lecture series in which there would be, say, three lectures, and then they would be turned into a book (at the end of the year)," he said.
Rosen's speech was entitled, "Is the Roberts Court on a Collision Course with America?" In other words, is the court on a path toward serious conflicts with the Congress and the President, which could eventually stand to weaken the court's position and limit its jurisdiction by those more democratic bodies? His answer to that question was "not yet."
"In this sense, for the moment, the Roberts Court is not on a collision course with America," he said near the conclusion of his speech. "It's not yet on a collision course with America, and as long as it remains the Kennedy Court, it won't be on a collision course with America. Could it go on a collision course with America in the not-so-distant future? It could."
Grossman, who helped select the topic for the Tuesday night speech, was certainly satisfied with Rosen's conclusion.
"I thought he was very good," Grossman said.
So did the audience, who gave Rosen a hearty applause after he ended the night saying, "T hank you so much for a wonderful conversation," before leaving to catch a train back to his home to Washington, D.C.
