Last Friday, the National Constitution Center hosted a two-part national Town Hall program on policing, protests, and the Constitution. This episode—which originally aired on our companion podcast Live at the National Constitution Center—features National Constitution Center President and CEO Jeffrey Rosen’s keynote conversation with Judge Theodore McKee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Their wide-ranging discussion covered qualified immunity for police officers, the history of racial inequality, protests and the First Amendment, and more. Part two of this program features a panel of leading scholars and commentators to further touch on these issues, and you can listen to it here. Listen and subscribe to Live at the National Constitution Center here.
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PARTICIPANTS
Theodore McKee has been a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit since 1994 and served as chief judge from May 2010 to October 2016. Before being appointed to the federal bench he was a state trial judge. During that time, he chaired the Pennsylvania Sentencing Commission. He has also served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and Deputy City Solicitor for the City of Philadelphia. In addition to his judicial duties, he currently serves on several nonprofit boards, and is an elected member of the American Law Institute where he serves as an Adviser on ALI's project to revise the Sentencing provisions of the Model Penal Code.<
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
- Additional resources for the discussion are also available here.
This episode was engineered by the National Constitution Center's AV team with help from Jackie McDermott and produced by Jackie McDermott and Tanaya Tauber. Research was provided by Maggie Gillespie, Lana Ulrich, and the constitutional content team.
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TRANSCRIPT
This transcript may not be in its final form, accuracy may vary, and it may be updated or revised in the future.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:00:00] I'm Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center. And welcome to We The People, a weekly show of constitutional debate. The National Constitution Center is a nonpartisan nonprofit chartered by Congress to increase awareness and understanding of the Constitution among the American people. During these challenging times, increasing awareness and understanding of the Constitution is more urgently important than ever, so that we can learn together in order to form a more perfect union.
It is central to the National Constitution Center's mission to convene discussions like the one we held last Friday, a national town hall discussion about policing, protests, and the Constitution. We'll share that town hall today with you in two parts. Part one is my conversation with former Chief Judge Theodore McKee of the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Part two features some of America's most distinguished scholars on policing, protests, and the Constitution. Professor Monica Bell of Yale Law School, David French, the writer and constitutional lawyer, Janai Nelson of the NAACP legal defense fund, and Professor Ted Shaw of the University of North Carolina.
The Constitution Center will be convening more of these town hall discussions in the weeks ahead. Thank you for learning with us and for tuning into We The People and our companion podcast Live at the National Constitution Center to learn more in the weeks ahead.
It is my great honor to introduce Judge Theodore McKee. He has been a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit since 1994. And he served as Chief Judge from 2010 to 2016. Before being appointed to the federal bench, he was a state trial judge, he chaired the Pennsylvania Sentencing Commission and he was an Assistant US attorney in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and Deputy City Solicitor for the City of Philadelphia. He's a great judge and a great friend of the National Constitution Center. Judge McKee, thank you so much for joining today.
There's so much for us to discuss, but I wanted to begin with some moving words from you. In a reflection celebrating your quarter century on the bench you wrote that you grew up in Rochester, New York in a small town near Scottsville in 1947. And you said, "I still have vivid images of fire hoses being turned on the peaceful marchers in Birmingham and of college students sitting in segregated lunch counters and getting ketchup poured over them and being insulted just because they were demanding the right to eat in public accommodations."
And you went on in subsequent writings to talk about, "I think that says something about how deep racism is ingrained in all of us. If Nelson Mandela can have that thought upon seeing a black pilot, I would submit to you that none of us is beyond the destructive and poisonous reach of racism." Judge McKee, in light of the extraordinary events that have convulsed America over the past weeks, what are your reflections about who we are and the future of the American idea?
Judge McKee: [00:03:33] Well, your remarks are incredibly apropos in your reference to Nelson Mandela's passage in his book where he talks about the fear that overtook him upon seeing a black pilot. And then, at that moment, realizing how he had internalized the racist messages that he grew up around. I really think that is something we must address if we're to ever really solve this problem. I don't have a lot of hope. I'm more hopeful lately because of the diverse nature of the people who have taken to the streets in peaceful protest to demonstrate and ask for redress. But I'm still not hopeful. And I think we can't really make progress until we come to grips with who we are.
And, and that is direct- directly responsive to your question. I read from an editor- editorial columnist who I have great respect for last week in the Philadelphia Inquirer column where she said, "This is not who we are." And upon reading that I thought to myself, I'm not so sure about that. This country was born. And and slavery- it was founded, founded upon the institution of slavery. The institution of slavery greatly funded, primarily funded the American Revolution. The United States Constitution, which some people have referred to as a sacred document, deals with slavery by perpetuating the slave trade, guaranteeing the federal government can't interfere with the slave trade for 20 years after the passage of the Constitution.
What we're seeing today, I think, is the direct result of a lot of governmental policies as well as social policies. There is a concept called Shooter's Bias. And I think in order to really understand what's going on with excessive force, it's something that people need to understand. They can just do a Google- Google search of Shooter's Bias and they will get the research. It'll come right up. But many, many studies have shown that police officers are much more inclined to shoot unarmed Black men than they are armed White males. And this is because of the imprinting of the bias, the subliminal bias that you referred to that that starts teaching us from the very, very beginning when we're born that Black people somehow are to be feared. And that our rights are not as worthy of protection as as White folks are.
There's a wonderful book called The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein where he traces the segregating of America not by living patterns and people moving to better school districts, but by deliberate governmental attempts arising after the second World War and, to a lesser extent, the first World War in housing policies, housing funding policies, who got funded to own homes. That policy continued going back before that. Once slavery was ended, the country went to a system that, at least in the Southern states, of of slave- of, of, of contact leasing which was really just a metamorphosis of the slave system which had preceded it. Until we realize that is not only a large part of who we are, but also that the subliminal bias that you referred to that is in all of us, that has got to be taken as who we are.
A statement was once made many years ago that a Black person, then I think the term was Negroes, have no rights that a White person is bound to respect. That was not made by a, a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Although he may have been a member of the Ku Klux Klan. It was made the then Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. And the opinion in which he wrote that statement Dred Scott, was joined by six justices. So the United States Supreme Court, speaking through seven justices, authored by a single justice, made the proclamation that Black folks have no rights that a White person is bound to respect.
The Kerner Commission years later talked about a a, a society. That we're evolving into two societies separate and increasingly unequal, going back to the language of [inaudible 00:07:15] versus Ferguson in the late 1800s. That to me is who we are. And until we come to grips with that fundamental racist boogie man that has infected us since the very beginning, so what some have referred to as original sin, we're not going to be able to get a handle on this because we're not going to be able to honestly confront what is really at the root of it.
There, there are laws which are put in place which are very noble in their reach. And then very, and they're noble in they're idealism. But those laws are not consistent with what a lot of people in this society are experiencing. And we can certainly get into the laws that protect people assembling and also protect police officers from civil lawsuit. But until we really come to grips, as I said, with who we are, the police officers that are responding in large part to what they've been taught subconsciously. I don't- I'm not saying they're all racist. But I do think each one of us, including Black folks, as Ne- Nelson Mandela pointed out, has that grain, impri- imprinted in them from society that there's something inherently uniquely different about Black folks that sets us apart from, from White folks. And we, we've gotta realize that.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:08:11] Thank you, Judge, for those extraordinarily moving and important opening thoughts. For recalling the words of Chief Justice Taney and recalling the heroes who opposed him, including John Brown and Frederick Douglass, all of whom are described in the exhibit on the Civil War and Reconstruction which is in the building behind me and which I can't wait to welcome everyone to once we can open again.
You mentioned two large topics. Police immunity and the rights of protesters. We already have lots of questions from our friends who are watching. And many of them deal with police immunity. Donna Ferrari asks, "Until recently, I didn't know there was police immunity. Where did that concept come from?" So tell us about this idea of police or qualified immunity, where it come from, and then tell us about how y- when you were [inaudible 00:09:10] you, you had trouble getting convictions of some officers because of this notion of police immunity.
Judge McKee: [00:09:04] Well, we did. I was- the situation I ran into was a little bit different. Qualified immunity as it's called refers to a protection from civil lawsuit. And it says that in order for a police officer to be found liable in a suit for aggressive- excessive force or something to that sort of constitutional tort or regulatory, that the officer has to violate a clearly established constitutional or statutory right and a reasonable officer in that officer's position should have known that he or she was violating a clearly established r- r- a cle- violating a constitutional principle.
When we talk about what is a clearly established constitutional right, it gets- it's really easy. Everybody knows the right to speech, the right to assemble, the right to petition for redress. Those are clearly established rights. That's the easy part. The difficult part is trying to prove that an officer should have known that the conduct, and this is the conduct that they're engaging in, was such as to have violated that clearly established right. So you have to really get into the weeds of the individual's conduct. The focus of the lens is not at the level of the Bill of Rights. It's at the level of what was going on at the moment the conduct which gave rise to the lawsuit occurred. Would someone in that situation have reason to know that they were violating a clearly constitution- a clearly established right? That usually requires a Supreme Court case or a Circuit Court case or a statute which would specifically tell the officer that their conduct was improper.
It is there because we don't want situations where an officer has to second guess and hesitate in their conduct when they're affecting a legal arrest. So that if every time an officer used excessive force that was, in fact, found to be excessive by a court later on, they were liable, that would not be a good state of affairs. And so qualified immunity arose in order to protect the reasonable officer. And w- w- the word reasonable there is really crucial. The reasonable officer going about his or her duties.
And my- I can respond to the second part if you want to in terms of my own prosecution.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:11:05] That, that would be great 'cause the story of your prosecution is really interesting.
Judge McKee: [00:11:10] This was many years ago. It would've been 1977-78 where I was involved, when I was an Assisting US Attorney with violating with- I'm sorry, with prosecuting police officers who had engaged in the use of excessive force using the Federal Civil Rights Statute.
And I can't get too much into the specific details of my case because of- it was Grand Jury material, but it was an a- attorney's dream case. It was a White defendant was set upon by a ... I'm sorry. Yeah. It was a White defendant set upon by a police dog controlled by a White officer. It was in the middle of the afternoon, so we don't get into the issue of what were they doing out there in the middle of the night. They're up to no good. That kind of argument from defense counsel was taken off the table. The victim did not have a prior record. So that was taken off the table. It was really the perfect record. I had a expert witness from the Philadelphia police force who was giving me incredibly strong testimony that eliminated the only problem I saw in the case and that was whether or not the police dog simply didn't obey a command. My expert took care of that.
The Grand Jury did not indict. And after they handed back the unsigned true bill as it's called, I asked the foreperson, I said to him, "Well, you didn't sign the indictment." Thinking he just forgot to sign the indictment. I- [inaudible 00:12:40] indict.
And he said to me, "No. We- I, I didn't forget to sign the indictment. We decided not to indict."
And I asked, "Can I ask why?"
And he said, "Well you can't tie the hands of police officers. You, you're going around here with this. And you're gonna tie the hands of police officers and prevent them from doing their job."
I asked him what the vote was and it was about two thirds not to indict to one third to indict, which I was flabbergasted. And the person who was then US Attorney [inaudible 00:13:05] told me that even though any Assistant US Attorney could get an indictment against the hamburger, somehow McKee couldn't get an indictment against the- a police officer [laughing] when his main witness was an expert from the police department. It's very, very difficult to do.
When you add into that the subliminal messages of, of racism it becomes even more difficult. The fact that we've been defined, Black folks, as somehow being more dangerous than White folks. It's easy for a jury to relate to an officer who says, "I was concerned for my own safety. I thought I had to use that level of force to protect myself." And to dissuade jurors from that by proof which meets the burden of proof criminal conviction, I'm mixing criminal and civil here which is proof beyond a reasonable doubt, is extraordinarily difficult in the best of circumstances. Civil liability is not easy either because of the doctrine of qualified immunity that we just discussed. But that is a court created doctrine. It's not in statute. It's not in the Constitution. It's a creature of the courts.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:13:42] With our next panelist, we'll delve into the point that you just made, Judge, which is that the original statute, the Ku Klux Klan Act or the Reconstruction period did- it was based on Federal common law and it was the Supreme Court, relatively recently, that created this doctrine of qualified immunity. And there are bills pending in Congress to change it. And we'll talk more about those in a moment.
First of all, I'm just blown away with the rigor and magnitude of the questions from our friends. There are 57 so far and they're really good. [
Judge McKee: [00:14:12] crosstalk 00:14:35] Well, that's heartening.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:14:12] [crosstalk 00:14:36] And what also is heartening is that Ann Landenson writes, "Just looking at Judge McKee's bio and discovered that today is his birthday." Happy birthday.
Judge McKee: [00:14:21] [laughs]
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:14:21] [laughs]
Judge McKee: [00:14:24] Thank you. This was not how I planned to spend my birthday a few weeks ago. But-
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:14:26] [crosstalk 00:14:52] I would a- I would ask everyone to [crosstalk 00:14:53] [laughter]. We're glad to celebrate with you. And educating the public about the Constitution-
Judge McKee: [00:14:36] Well, thank you.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:14:36] ... is a great way to spend your birthday. There are a whole bunch of questions about the balance between the rights of protestors and the need to maintain public order. Crystal Gaskin asks, "Why are the rights of protestors repeatedly being denied their first amendment rights nationwide?" Can you give us a broad sense of what the law of protest is? What-
Judge McKee: [00:14:55] Broadly-
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:14:55] Yeah.
Judge McKee: [00:14:56] ... We all- I think we all know that there is in the first amendment, one of the rights protected there, there- the others, is the right of assembly. You have a right to assemble, to peacefully assemble. The government can place certain regulations on that. They can make- they can regulate the time, the place and the manner of the- of the assembly as long as they do so in a manner which is content neutral. For example, they can't have one set of regulations in time, place or manner for folks espousing a point of view that the government might favor and another set of regulations which are more onerous for folks who are advocating a point of view the government disfavors.
Within that, the basically- the right of assembly is protected. And we'll go one step further and the- and, and note that, in terms of a civil suit, and this came up in the West- minster Baptist case that many of you are familiar with, in terms of civil liability, the right of assembly is also there. But there, the right of assembly really deals with a matter of public concern. If, if folks are going out in the street because they're concerned for example, our family is concerned that Uncle Johnny gave Aunt Monica the tea set and I should've gotten it and you organize a ra- parade around that, that is not the kind of assembly the first amendment extends to.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:16:07] Very interesting. And without commenting on particular cases, when can the police shut down a peaceful protest in order to protect the public safety of public officials?
Judge McKee: [00:16:20] Well, it's basically when the protest begins to- when the conduct creates a clear and present danger of a substantial evil that the government's entitled to guard against, then the government can step in and do what they have to do to eliminate or minimize that danger. Again, it has to be in w- in a way which is content neutral. So if there are armed folks on one side of the street that are identified as being left-wing and there are armed folks on the right side of the street that are identify as being right-wing, and there's tension going back and forth and conflict and it looks like fist fights are gonna break out, the police can step in and stop that. But they can't stop it by simply restraining the people on the left side of the street. They have to also restrain the people on the right side of the street or pose barriers so that they can't get to one another, which would probably be the better way to do it.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:17:07] That's, that's very important. But there does, as you said, have to be a clear and present danger. And the standard test for restricting speech from the Brandenburg case is there has to be imminent risk of a substantial evil and the speech has to be both intended to and likely to produce that imminent risk. You, you can't just step in without an actual threat of disruption or violence.
Judge McKee: [00:17:26] Right, right. And I will add to that, the fact that peace speech or assembly, which is otherwise lawful may have the effect of creating anger or hostility or provoking people, that does not remove the cloak of protection from that speech. And police need to do what they have to to protect the speakers in that situation. So and that is the Westminster Baptist Church case.
It is not the fact that people get ar- are offended by the speech, no matter how onerous the speech is, no matter how provocative it might be. In fact, in that case, and I can't remember who wrote it, I think it was Chief Jus- Chief Justice Roberts, said, in fact, the most effective speech is oftentimes the most provocative speech. So we don't have a- what's called a heckler's veto. The person hearing the speech cannot intercede or be aroused and become unruly and thereby put a mouthpiece or a gag on the people who are otherwise peacefully assembling.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:18:16] James Klein asks, "Does one have a right to peaceably assembly if it would violate a curfew?"
Judge McKee: [00:18:21] If it's a generalized curfew ... Well, actually, I probably shouldn't get into that because we have a curfew in Philadelphia and I can see those cases coming to me. So let me leave that one alone.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:18:29] Okay. Beth George, "Are police permitted to use force if peaceful protesters are protesting after the time of curfew? In New York, it seemed that different demographic neighborhoods are being treated differently, more harshly in the Bronx versus those in downtown Manhattan."
Judge McKee: [00:18:43] Well, when you get into differential treatment, that- there you do have a problem. And the, the, the state has a problem. They can't differentially treat people. If they have to exercise force to enforce a curfew, I don't know what you mean by force. I don't know whether it's escorting the person off the street, if it's locking them up, arresting them. I don't know but that gets into a very murky area. They can enforce a curfew. Again, they've gotta do it in a neutral and that doesn't mean that the curfew is- are enforced in the Black and the Puerto Rican neighborhoods and they're not enforced in the White neighborhoods. That would be a motion for, for an injunction to stop that kind of dualistic behavior.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:19:15] And, and give us a broad sense of what the Fourth Amendment law, the excessive force is. How does the Constitution restrain the police?
Judge McKee: [00:19:22] It basically has to be reasonable. Reasonable in the context of the circumstances of the officer. And, and that takes in all of the considerations. It can factor in how boisterous the crowd is, how many people are around. The physical positioning, is the officer in a position where their back is to the wall? Or their back is to a vehicle? And they can't safely pull out a baton or can't get to the pepper spray or they're afraid if they reach for the pepper spray, that they're going to be attacked. But it's gotta be reasonable. It can't be based upon fear. 'Cause I'd say irrational but that kinda contradicts what I said at the beginning because when you start from the assumption of the levels of which we're all trained to view Black folks as more dangerous, one could then argue that they're acting reasonably when they act too quickly to use force where it becomes excessive. That's not what I'm talking about by the officer acting reasonably. I'm talking about an objective kind of reasonableness, not a subjective kind of reasonableness.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:20:15] There's the famous case of excessive force, the Tennessee Garner case, which says that it's not reasonable to use deadly force to stop someone who's fleeing. Tell us more about that.
Judge McKee: [00:20:27] Well that's exactly it. If someone is running a- running away, it's no longer re- the reason for using force would be to protect oneself, possibly to effectuate a legal arrest. If someone is running away, there's no need to act to protect yourself if you're an officer. I guess it's probably a little bit trickier when you get into whether or not you can do that to effectuate an arrest. But I think the law's pretty clear that you can't do it. There are other means by which you've gotta try to effectuate that arrest. You can't just point the gun and shoot.
There's a body of law called- when you get into fleeing felons and the extent to which you can use deadly force to apprehend a fleeing felon, that is again something that I could see popping up in our court and I probably should, should not get into that.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:21:06] There's a series of questions about your really powerful comments about unconscious bias. Caroline Burns says, "I believe biases are taught, not imprinted since birth." Give us a sense of your thoughts about how best to combat the unconscious bias that you described.
Judge McKee: [00:21:22] I think first we have to be aware that they're there. And when I say imprinting, I would view imprinting as a kind of teaching. So I don't mean teaching in terms of formal education. It is imprinting. And I call that teaching. It's a kind of collective social teaching. But we- unless we recognize they're there, we can't fight them. The studies that I talked about with shooter's bias have also shown, many of them, that when officers are shown the extent to which they are more apt to shoot an unarmed Black person than an armed White person, they will then take measures to reduce that level of irrational, impulsive reaction.
I don't know if any study's that's been that's been conducted on long term follow up. The studies that I'm familiar with have been conducted with one set of imprinting or, or conditioning of the officer, measuring the response, and then dealing with the officer's responses, showing that they're biased, and then testing again. I'm not sure, and I know there are some scholars in this area and- who say, "You can't fix that. You just can't fix it." That maybe you can fix it for a day or a week or even a month, but long term the message is just too ingrained and you just cannot fix it.
It's a complicated problem because you don't want officers to have to hesitate for too long when they're on the street. So you don't want them kind of going through a whole kind of sociological, anthropological analysis before they use deadly force if they reasonably believe they have to use deadly force in that situation to protect themselves. But you also don't want officers assuming that a situation involving a Black person or Black folks or Hispanic people that's just where it rises to a level of justifying deadly force whereas they wouldn't in a, in a White neighborhood or with a White person or a, a more affluent person.
And I should mention also, it's not just about race. That's, that's a huge part of it. I think it's, it's class as well as caste. And race I would put in the caste basket. I think it's also class. I mean, to the extent that someone appears to be disadvantaged and poor I don't think they'd catch the same kind of hell that Black folks would catch if it's a, a poor, disadvantaged White person, but they're certainly not immune from the kind of disfavored social views and disfavored social treatment.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:23:22] Fascinating. Just the, the questions are coming so powerfully. And I, I think it's time for your closing thoughts before we bring in the rest of the panel. But we're getting several questions from our friends asking about whether or not you think that the Constitution is still serving people in the 21st century. So your thoughts on that and any other final wisdom that you'd like to leave our audience with would be great.
Judge McKee: [00:23:46] Well, i- from the beginning, it always served people. As I mentioned, from the beginning, it served people who were importing slaves for 20 years, to protect their right to import slaves. It's always served people. The question is does it serve everybody in the same way? And I don't know. I'm not- I'm a little more hopeful now as I said earlier because I see the heterogeneity of the people who are out there peacefully protesting. I saw one shot the other day, I think in Washington of, it must have been about 55 people peacefully kneeling to commemorate the memory of George Floyd. And I don't- and I made it a point to count. I think I counted three Black faces, identifiably Black, in that crowd. There may have been others that I couldn't identify as Black. In that sense, I'm hopeful.
But I've been hopeful before. I was hopeful when they had the march across the Selma Bridge. The second march across the Selma Bridge. I was hopeful when the Kerner Commission came out after LBJ appointed a commission to look into the re- the reasons for civil unrest and try to do something about it. But the statement from the Kerner Commission that I mentioned earlier is no less true today than it was back in '68 when the Kerner Commission came out and said that we're a society increasingly divided and increasingly unequal in terms of our ma- ma- maternal death rates. I think if you look at this- it does not sound as far afield- it's not as far afield as it- as it may sound.
The maternity birth rate death rate in the United States I think is either first or second. If you only look at the maternal death rate, the survival rate of, of babies, of Black and Puerto Rican folks, we're 13th or 14th. Now that statistic was several years ago. I doubt we've gotten any better.
The may- the governor of Minneapolis gave a beautiful speech the other day where he talked about how Minneapolis was second only to Hawaii on a happiness index. How Minneapolis residents were thriving in terms of education and, and, and safety and wellbeing. But then he said that it- that's if you're White. If you look at how Black folks are favoring, it's a very different story. And that's, that's a national scenario.
So in terms of the Constitution serving people, it certainly protects fundamental freedoms. I'd like to think we're moving to a point where it protects the fundamental freedoms of everybody the same. That's the principle. We're trying to get there. That's a large part of what courts are there for. Whether we'll get there or not, I just don't know. The criminal justice system certainly needs to be worked on and some of your panelists may well be able to address that. I think that's where you see the biggest inequities in terms of how the Constitution protects different people in different ways.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:26:09] Thank you so much, Judge McKee, for-
Judge McKee: [00:26:12] Thank you-
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:26:12] ... an inspiring conversation. It's so meaningful that you took time as a representative of the federal judiciary in these anxious times to educate our fellow citizens about the Constitution and your words of caution and your words of hope are very, very meaningful. So-
Judge McKee: [00:26:28] Well, I appreciate it. As I said, I'm not super hopeful but it- my grandmother used to say, and I think it's a saying of a religious denomination, "It's better to light one candle than to curse the darkness." I don't wanna just sit around cursing the darkness. So, this is my candle for the day and I appreciate being asked to light it. Thank you.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:26:43] Thank you for spreading light and we're happy to give a candle for your birthday as well. [laughs]
Judge McKee: [00:26:53] [laughs]
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:26:53] Thanks.
Today's show was engineered by the National Constitution Center's A/V Team and produced by Jackie McDermott. Research was provided by Maggie Gillespie, Lana Ulrich, and the Constitutional Content Team. This week's episode is a crossover with our companion podcast, Live at the National Constitution Center. All of us at the NCC are here to learn with you by continuing to convene these urgently important constitutional conversations in the weeks, months, and years ahead. You can find these conversations every week on We the People and you can also find them on Live at the NCC, which is the audio feed of all the public programs we host here on constitutional topics.
So the homework of the week for our We the People friends, please subscribe to Live at the National Constitution Center so that you can educate yourself as deeply as possible about the constitutional issues confronting America. There is so much for us to learn about together.
And always remember that the National Constitution Center is a private nonprofit. We rely on the generosity of people from across the country who are inspired by our nonpartisan mission of constitutional education and debate. You can support the mission by becoming a member at constitutioncenter.org/membership or give a donation of any amount to support our work, including this podcast, at constitutioncenter.org/donate.
On behalf of the National Constitution Center, I'm Jeffrey Rosen.
