Peter Sagal's Constitution Sessions: Who Are the 'We' in 'We the People?'
Peter Sagal examines the long struggle to bring all Americans under constitutional protection — and what it reveals about democracy's promises and limits.
Why we picked this
The question of who counts as 'the people' has driven American constitutional conflict for 250 years. Sagal's framing of it as an unresolved struggle rather than a settled achievement makes for genuinely challenging historical thinking.
Peter Sagal’s Constitution Sessions at the Chicago Humanities Festival 2026 span two festival days, each examining a different fault line in American constitutional history. At Northwestern University Day, he turns to the most foundational question: who has ever actually been included in the phrase “We the People” that opens the Constitution?
The answer, as Sagal demonstrates, is not fixed. The Constitution was written by and for a narrow class of people, and its subsequent history has been a series of battles — some won through amendment, some through courts, some still unresolved — over who falls within its protection. In a moment when those protections are again being contested, the historical question becomes urgently present.
This is the second of Sagal’s two Constitution Sessions; the first, on the Warren Court and its enemies, is held at Lakeview Day on May 9.
Part of the Chicago Humanities Festival’s Northwestern University Day at Norris University Center.