I'm Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, and welcome

to the latest of our We The People Constitutional Podcasts.

The National Constitution Center is the only institution in America chartered by Congress to disseminate information about the U.S. Constitution on a nonpartisan basis.

This has been an exciting week for constitutional debate at the National

Press Club in Washington, the National Constitution Center, the Federalist Society,

and the American Constitution Society hosted the first of a national series of town hall

debates that will transform constitutional discourse in America like the Lincoln-Douglas

debates by bringing together these two great

organizations to debate the constitutional issues of the day, and these podcasts are a continuation

of that great debating program.

Today we are discussing one of the most interesting cases

in front of the Supreme Court this term,

lawyers arguing about Texas's right

to ban state-issued license plates that feature the Confederate flag.

The case was Walker versus Texas Division son of Confederate Veterans Incorporated,

and it asked the court to settle a dispute about the distinction between government

speech and private speech and the challenges of drawing the boundaries.

The case came about in 2009 when the Texas Sons of Confederate Veterans submitted an application to the

state specialty license program for a plate design that featured the Confederate battle flag.

The Motor Vehicles Board declined the application citing a

policy that it quote may refuse to create a new specialty license plate if the

design might be offensive to any member of the public. The Confederate veterans sued claiming a violation

...