Jeffrey Rosen
Jeffrey Rosen
Jeffrey Rosen is an American academic and commentator on legal affairs. Legal historian David Garrow has called him "the nation's most widely read and influential legal commentator". Since 2013, he has served as the President and CEO of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia...
Jeffrey Rosen quotes about
cat writing democracy
Whenever I felt tempted to, I don't know, watch cat videos or bad Netflix TV instead of writing this [Louis] Brandeis biography, I thought of his stern but kindly visage and buckled down and wrote the damn thing, because there's so much information out there, and these are such anxious times in democracy, such unreasonable times.
writing gone saws
What is so inspiring about [Louis] Brandeis's writing is he saw it as a tool for democratic education. He would say things like the opinion is now convincing, now can we make it more instructive, after he'd gone through ten drafts.
writing voice louis-brandeis
[Louis] Brandeis is writing directly to us. His clear voice comes through a century and he's speaking to us and he's galvanizing us and he's persuading us. And that's why I love to read the prose.
teaching writing citizens
Why I find Louis Brandeis so exciting and inspiring because he's teaching us - good legal writing is not a matter of taste, it's a matter of connection with fellow citizens and of democratic education.
crazy book writing
Louis Brandeis really inspired me to write this book [Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet]. It was a crazy deadline. The editor said I'd miss the hundredth anniversary unless I pumped the thing out in six months, because I'd been delaying and dilly dallying for so long. So he both inspired me to get up early and write.
book writing thinking
But as I wrote the book [Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet], I tried to write it as clearly and directly and passionately as possible just thinking of communicating to readers who might want to learn about this great thinker and be inspired by him as I was.
writing sister-in-law mind
Louis Brandeis actually changes his mind about women's suffrage because he works with these brilliant women in the women's suffrage movement like Josephine Goldmark, his sister-in-law, where he writes a Brandeis brief which convinced the court to uphold maximum hour laws for women by collecting all these facts and empirical evidence.
ability achieve along boarding cases colleagues decisions discussing fellow glasses justices moderation simply unanimity
Temperament, conviviality, moderation and the ability to get along with your colleagues are as important as ideology, ... was able to achieve unanimity on the most important decisions of his era simply by encouraging his fellow justices to live in the same boarding house, and discussing cases over glasses of Madeira.
brakes chief court efficiency era excesses hundred impressive justices keeping led majority pace past quietly sentiments warren
With exceptional efficiency and amiability, he led a court that put the brakes on some of the excesses of the Earl Warren era while keeping pace with the sentiments of a majority of the country. His administration of the court was brilliantly if quietly effective, making him one of the most impressive chief justices of the past hundred years.
agents although capacity citizens fbi forbidden government greatly increase innocent knowledge legally mere messages targets technical
Although the FBI is legally forbidden from monitoring the communications of citizens who are not targets under Carnivore, the mere knowledge that government agents have the technical capacity to read e-mail messages will greatly increase the uncertainty of innocent citizens,
stars rocks musical
Basically [Louise] Brandeis was a Jeffersonian. And you say the timing is great, and it is in a lot of senses, except not for [Tomas] Jefferson, because this is a Hamiltonian moment, and he's the rock star of the minute with a great musical.
mind sides argument
[Louis Brandeis] insisted on the necessity of public reason, which he thought could only be achieved if all of us just take the time to inform ourselves about the best arguments on all sides of questions so that we can make up our own minds.
book intellectual mind
I was very much influenced by a great book by the scholar Neil Richards called Intellectual Privacy, that [Louis] Brandeis changed his mind on the proper balance between dignity and free speech.
moving thinking justice
I think even though the court is moving toward trying to translate the Constitution into a digital age, there was that wonderful unanimous decision that Chief Justice Roberts wrote saying you can't search a cellphone on arrest without a warrant.