Jeffrey Rosen

Jeffrey Rosen (born February 13, 1964) is an American academic and commentator on legal affairs. The legal historian David Garrow called him "the nation's most widely read and influential legal commentator." Among other books, Rosen is the author of three biographies of famous American judges:

Conversations with RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law

William Howard Taft: The American Presidents Series: The 27th President, 1909-1913

Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet

Since 2013, he has served as the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, in Philadelphia.

He was graduated as valedictorian from the Dalton School (1982), summa cum laude from Harvard University in English Literature and Government (1986), and was a Marshall Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (1988), from which he received a second bachelor's degree. He then received his Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School (1991) and then he served as law clerk to Chief Judge Abner Mikva of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

He is a professor of law at the Law School of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and was the commentator on legal affairs for The New Republic from 1992 to 2014. He then joined The Atlantic, as a contributing editor. Rosen is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he speaks and writes about technology and the future of democracy. He often appears as a guest on National Public Radio. He was a staff writer at the New Yorker, and he is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine.

Rosen, the son of Estelle and Sidney Rosen, is married to Lauren Coyle Rosen, a cultural anthropologist, attorney, and assistant professor of anthropology at Princeton University. Previously, he was married to Christine Rosen (formerly Stolba), a historian.

Rosen has written frequently about the U.S. Supreme Court. He has interviewed Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice John Paul Stevens, Justice Stephen Breyer, Justice Elena Kagan, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Justice Anthony Kennedy. Justice Ginsburg credited his early support for her Supreme Court candidacy as a factor in her nomination. "...she sent me a generous note, fanning my hopes of becoming a judicial Boswell. (You planted the idea, she wrote, I'll try hard to develop it.)" His essay about Sonia Sotomayor, then a potential Supreme Court nominee, provoked controversy for its use of anonymous sources, however, other media outlets, including the New York Times, had relied upon similar sources. Rosen worked with Justice Elena Kagan for many years and is the brother-in-law of Justice Department attorney Neal Katyal. In an opinion piece published after Kagan's nomination hearings and before the Senate's vote on her confirmation, Rosen encouraged Kagan to look to the late Justice Louis Brandeis as a model "to develop a positive vision of progressive jurisprudence in an age of economic crisis, financial power and technological change."

Rosen became president of the National Constitution Center in 2013, and he has been credited with bringing a "new energy and purpose" to the nonprofit education center.

Congress chartered the Constitution Center "to disseminate information about the U.S. Constitution on a non-partisan basis." Rosen has worked to create an environment in which Americans with different political perspectives may convene on all media platforms for constitutional education and debate. With a $5.5 million grant from the Templeton Foundation, he formed the Coalition of Freedom Advisory Board, chaired by the heads of the conservative Federalist Society and liberal American Constitution Society, to oversee the creation of the "Interactive Constitution," which the College Board has made a centerpiece of the new AP history and government exams. The Interactive Constitution project commissions scholars to write about every clause of the Constitution, discussing areas of agreement and disagreement between left and right. It also allows users to explore the historic sources of the Bill of Rights and compare America's protected liberties to other constitutional systems throughout the world. USA Today has called the Interactive Constitution an "Internet sensation", noting that it received nearly five million unique visitors in the first months after its launch in September 2015.

Rosen moderates the weekly podcast "We the People" for the National Constitution Center, convening liberal and conservative scholars to discuss timely constitutional issues as well as constitutional debates. In 2014, the Constitution Center opened the George H. W. Bush Bill of Rights gallery, displaying rare copies of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and one of the twelve original copies of the Bill of Rights. In 2015, the Center opened a constitution drafting lab, supported by Google, that convenes constitution-drafters and students from around the world for constitution drafting exercises.

• Conversations with RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law, New York: Henry Holt, 2019. ISBN 9781250235169.
• William Howard Taft: The American Presidents Series: The 27th President, 1909-1913, New York: Times Books, 2018. ISBN 9780805069549
• Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. ISBN 030015867X.
• Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change, co-editor, Benjamin Wittes, Washington, D.C.: Brookings Press, 2013. ISBN 0815724500.
• The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries that Defined America, New York: Times Books, 2007. ISBN 0-8050-8182-8.
• The Most Democratic Branch: How the Courts Serve America, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-19-517443-7.
• The Naked Crowd: Reclaiming Security and Freedom in an Anxious Age. New York: Random House. 2004. ISBN 0-375-75985-9.
• The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America, New York: Random House, 2000.ISBN 0-679-44546-3.