Keepers of Our Republic
Keepers of the Republic is a new podcast from Keep Our Republic that takes listeners inside the institutions at the heart of American democracy. Through thoughtful conversations with election officials, county clerks, legal experts, and retired federal judges, we explore how elections are really run, separate fact from fiction, and highlight why an independent judiciary is essential to a strong republic.
At a time of uncertainty and misinformation, Keepers of the Republic provides trusted, nonpartisan insights into how our democracy works—and how, together, we can keep it strong.
Keepers of Our Republic
America's 250th Birthday: Hope, Democracy & What Comes Next
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America turns 250 this week, but what does that milestone mean at a moment of deep political division?
In this special Independence Day episode of Keepers of Our Republic, host Brooke Bergen shares a collection of reflections from retired federal judges, legal scholars, civic educators, and leaders from across the legal profession, recorded during a symposium at the University of Washington School of Law.
Rather than discussing a single legal issue, this episode pauses to reflect on the American experiment itself. Guests offer birthday wishes for the nation, celebrate the enduring ideals of liberty and the rule of law, acknowledge the country's unfinished work, and share their hopes (and fears) for the next 250 years.
From the importance of judicial independence and civic education to the dangers of political polarization, these conversations explore what it means to preserve a constitutional democracy across generations.
Featuring reflections from:
Meg Satterthwaite, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers
Greg Nunziata, Executive Director, Society for the Rule of Law
Mary Smith, Past President, American Bar Association
Stephen Rosenbaum, UC Berkeley School of Law
John Day, President, American College of Trial Lawyers
Judge Mark Wolf (Ret.), U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts
Corey Paulson, TVW Civic Education
Louise Dubé, CEO, iCivics
Judge Thomas B. Griffith (Ret.), U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
Whether you're celebrating Independence Day, thinking about the future of American democracy, or simply looking for thoughtful conversation beyond today's headlines, we hope these reflections leave you with renewed appreciation for the responsibilities of citizenship—and the work still ahead.
Welcome back to Keepers of our Republic, a new weekly podcast from Keep Our Republic that takes listeners inside the institutions at the heart of American democracy.
Every week, Keepers of Our Republic features thoughtful conversations with election administrators and retired federal judges. We explore how elections are really run, discuss why an independent judiciary is essential to a strong republic, and separate fact from fiction in a fast-changing world.
Learn more about Keep Our Republic, a nonpartisan nonprofit, at our website, https://keepourrepublic.org
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Welcome back, everyone, to Keepers of Our Republic and a very happy early Independence Day to you all. This week we have a very special episode of Keepers of Our Republic in celebration of the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Freedom as a country. We are speaking with judges, civic educators, legal professionals from across the United States who came together this spring for a legal symposium at the University of Washington School of Law. If you are a longtime listener of the podcast, you are familiar with some of the work that was done at that symposium. As a special treat, while we were gathered there this spring, I offered everyone the opportunity for them to record their birthday wishes for America on this historic anniversary. From some of America's leading jurists and legal thinkers, we offer messages of hope, of congratulations, reflections on the incredible American experiment that is 250 years and going, as well as words of warning and concern for the state that we find ourselves in as a country right now. I hope that you enjoy listening to these messages on the eve of America's 250th birthday. And if you don't already, make sure you like and subscribe for new episodes each week of Keepers of Our Republic, a nonpartisan podcast by the nonprofit Keep Our Republic. And without further ado, I'll hand it over to my esteemed panel of guests. Hi, my name is Meg Sodterthwaite.
SPEAKER_01I'm the UN Special Reporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, which means that it's my job to look at the issue of the independent bar and the independent judiciary around the world. As the United States uh celebrates its 250th anniversary, I think we need to do two things. One is to double down on those really foundational principles of independence of the judiciary, of a fair rule of law for everyone. And two, to really own up to the places where we need to do more work, equality for all. If you think about the fact that we had slavery when this country was founded, we had to have the second founding. We had to have the amendments that happened after the Civil War. It's important that we embrace both of those sides, our imperfections and our principles that call us to our better selves and that really demand that we say we've got to move forward and we've got to protect those really wonderful things that make us the United States.
SPEAKER_08They were taking a risk with their own careers, but they were taking a risk with the country. They had a vision of something that had never been in the world, and they believed it could be this country of where all men are created equal, where the law rules, not a king. This was this experiment, and they knew it was vulnerable. They knew that uh it could collapse, and if it collapsed, it would collapse from within because we weren't worthy of it. We've been worthy of it for 250 years. We've made it better over 250 years, we've made it truer to the founder's vision, more inclusive to every American. Uh, and it's on us to continue that. If this fails in our lifetime or in our children's lifetime, it'll fail, fail because of mistakes we've made. And so we need to today and with every generation recommit to strengthening this beautiful gift we were given that is both powerful because it it it it it is it it powers a democracy, it powers an economy, it powers the greatest country in the world, but it's also delicate because it depends on us supporting it and believing in it. And now is uh as good a time as any to to to to redouble that commitment uh so this country enjoys uh the blessings that we have for another 250 years.
SPEAKER_07I'm Mary Smith, past president of the American Bar Association and president of the Task Force for American Democracy. I have faith in America, and we are on our journey for a more perfect union. Uh this country is one of the greatest experiments that there has ever been, and I look forward to the next 250 years.
SPEAKER_10Stephen Rosenbaum, Frank C. Newman lecturer, UC Berkeley School of Law. Uh it's not about the arch that the president is going to construct uh somewhere near Arlington Cemetery, I believe. That's not what the 250th anniversary is about. It's a perfect time to understand the dangerous state we're in right now with the eroding of democracy, what some political scientists call the backsliding of democracy. It's an important time to take note of what's going on and to um keep this republic alive. Uh some of our founders, the uh term that was uh Ben Franklin, the famous quote is you can have the republic if you can keep it. So it's our constant job to keep this uh keep this democracy in place. It's 250 years old, it's still young by historical standards, and and as we see in the times we're living through right now, it's not immune from um erosion. It's not uh there's no defense against some of the corruption and the chaos and the um disregard that we're seeing by our our nation's leaders in the Congress and in the uh White House.
SPEAKER_00Great. I'm John Day from Nashville, Tennessee. I'm president of the American College of Trial Lawyers. I am uh cautiously optimistic. Um I'm a I'm a plaintiff's personal injury lawyer in Nashville, Tennessee. I have to win 12-0 in front of juries. We don't have uh majority rules type verdicts. So I have a whole lot of feet faith in people to do the right thing in the long run. In the short run, there are highs and lows. There are atmospheric pressures on this system, as we talked about earlier. Uh I think the American people are gonna pay attention and uh are gonna reverse the wrongs that have been happening. They're gonna have their voices heard at the ballot ballot box. And I have I still have uh I still have high expectations of us to get back to where we were and then further to improve. We've got a lot of work to do around the world to restore friendships, I believe. It's gonna take, I don't know that I'll see it in my lifetime that we will be back to where we were uh on December 31st, 2024. But um I'm confident that we can do that work.
SPEAKER_06I'm Mark Wolf, retired United States district judge as of November 7, 2025, in senior counsel to the law firm of Todd and Weld in Boston. Uh, optimism means uh you uh expect something's gonna succeed, like this effort to resist this existential threat to American democracy. I would say I'm hopeful, because in my lexicon, hope means not that you necessarily expect to succeed, but you know it's the right thing to do. And I would remind the American people at this 250th anniversary of our republic that uh we've often proudly say we've had the longest democracy in the history of the world. But that should educate us to understand that all the others failed. And we should not be so arrogant as to assume that our democracy, that's been so good to many of us, uh is uh enduring. Uh Justice Louis Brandeis, uh, my judicial hero, uh said that we have to struggle in each generation to truly possess what we've inherited. And I don't think that insight was ever more accurate or important in our country than it is now. And I would encourage uh younger people and their elders uh to engage in that struggle where they are, in any way they can contribute to it, to try to assure that uh our democracy doesn't fail the way all others have in the history of the world.
SPEAKER_05Hi, my name is Corey Paulson, and I am the head of civic education at TVW in the education department of Teach with TVW. You know, I am an optimistic realist. So, and I've always, you know, I've always been that way. And again, I've been teaching American government for a long time. Um I'm optimistic. I'm also living in today's world. So, but I talk to the kids and I I see their engagement and I see when they um when their eyes light up and they're so excited about something that they now understand and they see where they can make that impact. And they know that there's not there's ways to get engaged, civically engaged, that isn't just protesting, although that's you know effective as well, or being in government, being a legislator or a congressperson, like that's also effective as well. But there's so many other ways to have your voice heard and to be engaged. Um, that gives me that gives me hope. It's funny, so it's you know, America 250. I've been spending time in the state archives recently because we're doing this project on, we've been pulling out letters that kids wrote to Governor Dan Evans in 1976 at the Bicentennial. And so kids from all over the country were sending letters to governors all over the country, apparently, um, because there's like a lot of them. And they're writing um to the governor about problems that they see in our society today. And I gotta say, some of them could have been written today. There was one letter from this student, she's like in 10th grade in 1976, about how she's overwhelmed by the news. And sometimes she just wants to turn it off and she turns it off for a couple days, and then she comes back and she wants to fight. That letter gives me a little bit of hope. Also, it's a little sad, but also hope because you see, oh, 50 years ago somebody was just feeling this way, but they continued to fight and they continued to work, and we see the ebbs and flow of history. As an American historian as well, you know that things go up and down, and we're, you know, hopefully that we're going to find strength in how our government is going to continue to function in a positive way.
SPEAKER_04Hi, I'm Louise Jubet, and I'm the CEO of iCivics. Uh, I believe in the American experiment. I believe we will come out of this in a more unified way. Uh, but it's not going to be pretty for uh necessarily for quite some time. I look at this on a very long timeline, uh, and I may or may not see it, but I do think we are uh a strong, resilient people and that we will find our way. Uh America's 250th is a great opportunity to do that. Um it comes at a time where we're very polarized, so we'll see. Um but on a longer term, uh it it is um yeah, I I just it's not only that I believe in the experiment, but I think that more people believing in it will yield the right result. So hope breeds hope, and it it will uh ha help us all come together.
SPEAKER_02I'm Judge Thomas B. Griffith, uh retired, uh United States Circuit Court judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit from 2005 to 2020. It's been a great run. We're not perfect, um, but the good that uh American ideals have done in the world are remarkable. And and and we ought to celebrate it. Not not just for ourselves, but for what it's done um to the world, uh to teach the importance of democracy and the value of human dignity and human rights. So it's a time to pause and to celebrate. Uh it's also a a time for reflection because w we in the United States are undergoing a stress test of our democracy right now. And and and in my view, uh the stress test doesn't come from the fact that we disagree with each other about fundamental things. We're Americans. We better disagree. I mean, uh that's what the Constitution's for, is to allow us to disagree with one another and to work with each other to resolve those disagreements, right? To get to get work done even though we disagree with one another. So I don't want to ever take disagreement out of it. There's nothing wrong with disagreement. What's wrong is the way we're disagreeing now. Because it's not just that I think you have bad views on tax policy, it's now you are a bad person. You are an evil person. The political scientists call this affective polarization, affect, emotional polarization. A majority of Democrats think that uh Republicans are evil, and vice versa, or a more majority of Republicans think that Democrats are evil. W when when in and we're the only major country in the world that is that way. The only one where where a majority of the people think that a majority of the people on the other side are are are bad. That's not healthy. We can't that can't be sustained. The uh former conservative columnist Michael Gerson wrote, said America can with the Constitution can withstand vigorous disagreement. It was built for it. It cannot withstand a citizenry that holds each other in contempt. That's the that's the greatest concern I have right now, is that uh the contemptuous nature of our public debate will ruin this project. Okay, so I have a solution though. Here's the way we should all celebrate uh the 250th. Well, go to a baseball game, okay, eat a hot dog. Um if you're vegetarian, find something else. But you know, go to the fireworks, do all that, but then try something else. Try inviting somebody from the other side of the political spectrum to coffee, to lunch, to have a beer, to sit down and then ask them this question. So, what do you think about this? Whatever the topic is. And then you just sit and listen. Just listen. That's the the greatest problem in our country today, I think, is we're not listening to understand where other people are coming from. Our greatest president at the moment of our maximum national peril, Peryl said it best, Abraham Lincoln, in his first inaugural address, as states were seceding from the Union, democracy was being destroyed right in front of his eyes. What was the message that he gave as part of our American scripture? He said, We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. So that's what we need to work on at America 250. Those bonds of affection. We need to learn how to love not too strong a word, to love people who see things differently than us. We need to understand that we're connected to one. We belong to each other. We're Americans. And we we're we're trying to create a more perfect union. And and and and your ideas may be just uh really bad ideas. Okay? But I'm not gonna think that just because you have those ideas you're you're a bad person. That's we need to get to that. We need we need to get to that. I'm afraid if we don't get to that there may not be uh 500 to celebrate or 350 to celebrate. Uh we we we need we need we need to we need to strengthen those bonds of affection now.
SPEAKER_03Thank you all again for joining us this week. Don't forget to like and follow Keepers of Our Republic here on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your favorite podcasts. I'll see you next week.
SPEAKER_09If you like this episode, please share it on social media and tell your friends. It's the best way for folks to find out about us. I hope you'll agree that our guest is indeed a keeper of the republic. If you want to learn more about how you can help keep our republic, stop on over to our website, keep ourrepublic.org.