Caesar or Jackson? Jeffrey Rosen on the Constitution, the Founders, and What’s at Stake Today

“For Jefferson, Hamilton is not a hated enemy to be opposed or destroyed, but a respected adversary to be debated with. And that is the spirit we have to get back to today.” — Jeffrey Rosen

Jeffrey Rosen is one of the most respected constitutional scholars in America — CEO Emeritus of the National Constitution Center, professor of law at George Washington University Law School, contributing editor at The Atlantic, and the author of nine books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Pursuit of Happiness and The Pursuit of Liberty. In this conversation, Rosen traces the Hamilton–Jefferson rivalry from the founding era to the Roberts Court, asks whether the current administration looks more like Caesar or Andrew Jackson, makes the case that deep reading may be the last best hope for democracy, and previews his forthcoming biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It is the kind of conversation that reminds you what civic discourse, at its best, can actually look like.

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Key Takeaways

Caesar or Jackson? Rosen frames the central question about the current administration: is this a Caesar who subverts the separation of powers and rules by whim rather than law, or a Jackson-style populist who attacks elites and large institutions but ultimately operates within the constitutional system? The distinction, Rosen argues, matters enormously.

The Hamilton–Jefferson divide is still very much alive. The debate between liberal and strict construction of the Constitution did not begin with originalism. It began with the bank. Hamilton argued Congress could imply powers beyond what’s enumerated; Jefferson said no. John Marshall sided with Hamilton, and that fault line runs directly through today’s Supreme Court.

The pursuit of happiness meant something very different to the Founders. For Jefferson, Madison, and their classical sources, happiness was not about feeling good. It was about being good — cultivating temperance, prudence, courage, and justice, and using reason to moderate unproductive emotions like anger, envy, and fear.

Social media is Madison’s nightmare. Madison designed a system of deliberative slowness. Social media’s “enraged to engage” business model is the precise opposite. Rosen adds that AI compounds the problem by presenting a single probabilistic version of truth rather than fostering the clash of competing ideas that the Enlightenment depended on.

Brandeis offers a way out of the left–right impasse. Suspicious of both big government and big business, and committed to industrial democracy and worker ownership, Louis Brandeis remains the historical figure who most persuasively bridges the divide between libertarians and progressives.

Opposed in life as in death. Hamilton and Jefferson spent careers savaging each other. Yet after Hamilton’s death, Jefferson placed a bust of Hamilton across from his own at Monticello. That image — honored adversaries, not enemies — is the model Rosen believes the country desperately needs to recover.

About Our Guest Jeffrey Rosen is President and CEO Emeritus of the National Constitution Center, a professor of law at George Washington University Law School, and a contributing editor at The Atlantic. He is the author of nine books, including The Pursuit of Happiness, The Pursuit of Liberty, and Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet. His essays and commentary have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and on NPR. He also served as an advisor for Ken Burns’ The