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 the only institution in America chartered by Congress

to disseminate information about the U.S. Constitution on a nonpartisan basis.

And today we're examining the role of the Constitution in an age of globalization.

On October 24th, the United Nations Charter turned 70.

And on September 17th, Justice Stephen Breyer

came to the National Constitution Center to discuss his new book, The Court and the World.

In the book and at the Center, he asked us to consider the following question,

does international law have a place in the interpretation of the US Constitution?

We see this issue arise in Eighth Amendment cases as it did this past June

when Justice Breyer joined Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in calling for the end of the death

penalty and citing international authority.

It's also come up in cases about affirmative action, LGBT rights, and other topics.

Here then are the important questions before us.

Should international agreements or other national constitutions and laws

inform our understanding of the US Constitution?

And when are international agreements, treaties, or laws

enforceable and binding within our borders.

Joining me to discuss these questions are two of America's leading experts in international

and constitutional law,

Ona Hathaway is the Gerald and Bernice Latrobe Smith professor of international law

and director of the Center for Global Legal Challenges at Yale Law School.

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