The National Constitution Center is an organization devoted to educating the public about the United States Constitution. In the excerpts it is described as located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and as the only organization chartered or funded by Congress for the purpose of furthering understanding and appreciation of the Constitution. Its president or executive director is identified as Jeffrey Rosen.
Mission and location
Bob Zadek introduced the Center to his audience as a “very important organization” and asked his guest to explain it. Sheldon Gilbert, identified as Vice President for Content and Development and a senior fellow for constitutional studies at the Center, described its origin: during the Reagan administration, Congress issued a resolution calling for an organization with the singular purpose of educating the American public about the meaning and importance of the Constitution. Gilbert said the Center is located on Independence Mall, across from Independence Hall, where the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were signed, and described it as both an educational center and a national platform for teaching about the Constitution Revenge of the Pen and the Phone (2018).
In later episodes Zadek gave a recurring description of the institution. He said that, as Jeffrey Rosen is fond of saying, it is the only nonprofit organization funded by Congress for the sole and exclusive purpose of increasing awareness and understanding of the Constitution, and he commended membership in and participation in it. He described it as offering a plethora of interesting presentations and an interactive constitution, and as the go-to site and physical place in Philadelphia to learn more about the Constitution 3 Libertarian Ideas to Strengthen Democracy (2022). In an earlier episode he called it “nonpartisan” and said it has a wonderful exhibition Timothy Sandefur on The Libertarian Constitution (2021).
The Interactive Constitution
Asked by Zadek about the Interactive Constitution, Gilbert explained that a user can go to constitutioncenter.org or download a mobile app, look up the text of any provision of the Constitution, and read what the Center has assembled from top scholars on the right and the left. He said each scholar starts with areas of agreement, and that from there the resource presents matters of debate, with the perspectives of conservative scholars and of liberal scholars on the same part of the Constitution. Gilbert described it as a place to hear both sides of the argument and to see scholars disagreeing without being disagreeable Revenge of the Pen and the Phone (2018).
Zadek treated that balance as the resource’s chief virtue, telling listeners he defied them to find another resource offering a balanced explanation of both sides of an issue, and arguing that it helps listeners organize their thinking rather than reinforcing their own views in an echo chamber. He also named Jeff Rosen as the Center’s director or president in connection with the project Revenge of the Pen and the Phone (2018).
The three-Constitution project
The Center commissioned three teams of scholars—a libertarian team, a progressive team, and a conservative team—each working independently, to write or rewrite the Constitution in a way more consistent with their respective values. Zadek described the result as three different Constitutions that differed quite dramatically in some respects while remaining more or less consistent with the current Constitution’s structure, and noted that in many ways the three teams reached very similar conclusions, which surprised him Timothy Sandefur on The Libertarian Constitution (2021).
Timothy Sandefur, Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute and a member of the libertarian team, opened his appearance with the remark that the team “rescued the Constitution.” Zadek introduced him as a litigator on property rights and individual freedom issues, an author, an adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute, a graduate of Hillsdale College and the Chapman School of Law, and a professor of law at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia School of Law. Zadek framed the project as an experiment in having each team either make the Constitution more libertarian, make it more true to founding principles, or correct errors the Founders may have made, and said he would leave it to Sandefur to supply the proper verb for what the team did Timothy Sandefur on The Libertarian Constitution (2021).
The Guardrails of Democracy project
The Center undertook a second project asking what is not working in the American system of democracy. Zadek described the question as which “guardrails”—the phrase the Center chose—have either failed or ought to be put in place but are not, so that the system of government works better. As with the earlier project, a progressive group, a conservative group, and a libertarian group analyzed the question independently and produced their own answers, and Zadek said he would host a team member from each of the three groups The Libertarian Dream Team - Ilya Somin (2022). He added that there does not seem to be much dispute that elements of the system of government are not working well, and that the reports of the three teams are available at the Center’s website, with the result being a three-way tie rather than a ranking Enhancing Trust in Democracy (2022).
Ilya Somin, a professor of law at George Mason University, spoke to the project as a member of the libertarian team. He said that while he does not work for the Center and therefore could not definitively speak to its motives, he understood the goal as recognizing serious problems with the democratic system in the United States over the last several years, particularly but not exclusively during the 2020 election and its aftermath, and that the Center did what it has done on a number of other occasions: convene teams of specialists from different ideological viewpoints to think about the problems and the solutions. He named the other two members of his group as Walter Olson and Clark Neily, both of the Cato Institute The Libertarian Dream Team - Ilya Somin (2022).
Somin outlined three aspects of the crisis the libertarian team addressed. The first was immediate threats to the integrity of the electoral system and the political process, such as the efforts he attributed to President Trump to overturn the result of the 2020 election and stay in power even though he lost. The second was the broader problem of empowering people to have a meaningful say in the policies they live under, which the report’s second section addressed through voting with one’s feet in the federal system and through expanded opportunities for decisions in the private sector—a route Somin said is often more empowering and leads to better decision-making than traditional ballot box voting. The third section outlined ways to increase opportunities to participate in governance, particularly by strengthening the jury system, which he said the founding fathers and others like Alexis de Tocqueville treated as a central mechanism for ordinary people to participate in government but which has been lost or degraded over recent decades The Libertarian Dream Team - Ilya Somin (2022).
Ned Foley, holder of the Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law at Ohio State University and director of its election law program, appeared as a member of the progressive team. Zadek introduced him by cataloguing the election-related controversies he said put election law at the center of the question: a sitting president questioning election results, a storming of the Capitol to upset the election process, questioning of the balloting process, and allegations that people were denied access to vote or that too many or the wrong people voted. Zadek called the project’s work product even better than the project itself and said the three reports should be picked from rather than ranked Enhancing Trust in Democracy (2022).
Across episodes: the Center as commissioner
The excerpts show no development in how the Center itself is described; what changes is the project it is said to have commissioned. In December 2018 the Center appears through its own officer, Sheldon Gilbert, explaining its origin, location and Interactive Constitution, and through Zadek’s praise of it as a balanced educational resource Revenge of the Pen and the Phone (2018). In November 2021 Zadek described the three-team exercise in rewriting the Constitution, with Timothy Sandefur speaking for the libertarian team Timothy Sandefur on The Libertarian Constitution (2021). By August 2022 the Center’s project had shifted to the guardrails of democracy, with Ilya Somin presenting the libertarian team’s three-part diagnosis and Ned Foley appearing for the progressive team in the same series The Libertarian Dream Team - Ilya Somin (2022) Enhancing Trust in Democracy (2022). The recurring element across all of these is the Center’s practice of convening scholars from different ideological viewpoints on the same question; the excerpts do not show that practice being questioned or revised.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state when the Center was founded, what its budget or governance is, or how its congressional charter or funding actually operates beyond the descriptions Zadek and Gilbert give. They do not report the contents of the conservative team’s report in either project, nor any response by the Center to the teams’ proposals. No excerpt states whether the Center endorsed any recommendation, and the fate of the proposals is not discussed. The excerpts also do not cover the Center’s exhibitions, staff or programming beyond the Interactive Constitution and the two commissioned projects.