News-Letter

Media Credit: law.gwu.edu Jeffrey Rosen [Click to enlarge]

"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.

Continued...

Page 1 of 3 next >

Article Tools