A Constitution for the 21st Century · 01

Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts

The series opens: some two dozen scholars and politicians ask how democratic constitutions can still be amended, and by whom, when AI, platforms and biotechnology are redistributing power.

When: September 11 to 12, 2026
Where: Day 1 evening: Boston Public Library. Day 2: Norton's Woods Conference Center, Cambridge
Theme: Democracy

A Constitution for the 21st Century is the first international project of the McQuillan Institute for Science, Technology, and the Human Future. As co-founder Sheila Jasanoff explained on the second morning, the project will not hold a world constitutional convention. Over two or three years it will compare how six countries (the US, France, South Africa, the UK, India and Japan) govern AI, the wider digital revolution, designer biotechnology and climate change.

Boston was the first convening, on democracy. Jasanoff started from four things she said were eroding: shared facts, trust in experts, respect for norms, and the belief that might does not make right. In the US, she said, the very idea of democracy is in question. The apparatus of representation (ballots, voting machines, even the postal system) absorbs most of the attention, and the question of what democracy is for gets pushed aside.

The meeting ran over two days. On the evening of September 11 the Boston Public Library hosted an opening dinner with welcome remarks, a keynote by Jill Lepore and a solo violin piece. On September 12 a full day in Cambridge opened with a keynote by former Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, followed by four panels: thinking constitutionally, the future of progress, the future of the demos, and the future of expertise. It closed with reflections from the leads of two later convenings and from Jasanoff.

Key takeaways

1Amendment was treated as democracy's core capacity. Lepore argued that a constitution's legitimacy depends on its openness to amendment and said the US Constitution has not been meaningfully amended since 1971. Varadkar described Ireland, where only a referendum can change the constitution, and where randomly selected citizens' assemblies prepared those votes.
2Several speakers analysed technical architecture as a de facto constitution. Stanger said one firm can train the model, own the infrastructure and change the operating rules on its own. Teachout said AI is concentrated at every layer of the stack. Lepore used the phrase "artificial state" for private firms taking over functions of the state.
3The claim that technology is inevitable was itself put under scrutiny. Barba-Kay said AI companies pair inevitability with a promise of rescue; Fung said doomers and accelerationists share one deterministic line; Pfotenhauer said treating innovation as the answer to every problem moves questions out of electoral politics.
4There were more concrete proposals than at most such meetings: sortition-based citizens' assemblies (Landemore, Varadkar); a tiered, verifiable, federated, portable AI architecture founded by libraries (Stanger); a constitutional chapter on parties, media and money in politics (Yadav); and using background rules on zoning, water and land use to contest data centres (Engle). The conditions under which each would work were rarely debated on stage.
5The closing speakers asked for American constitutionalism to be "provincialized." Sunder Rajan said South Africa's constitution drew mainly on Canada, Germany, India, Namibia and others, and Jasanoff summed up the project's stance as many universalisms that are also one.

Programme

Remarks

Opening remarks (Sept 11, Boston Public Library)

The two co-founders and the Mayor of Boston used the library's history to set the theme: democracy depends on freely available knowledge and on public spaces that can hold disagreement.

Keynote

Keynote: the constitution as a machine that needs repair

Lepore started from an orrery rescued in a 1787 Boston fire, argued that the capacity for amendment is the source of a constitution's legitimacy, and asked who will amend constitutions in the age of AI.

She said the framers designed the Constitution with a Newtonian image of a machine, knew machines break, and so built in an amendment procedure. She calls this the "philosophy of amendment."
She argued that any constitution's legitimacy depends on embracing that philosophy, citing the Massachusetts Constitution (in use since 1780), amended 123 times.
She said the US Constitution "broke" after 1971, its last meaningful amendment, with the Equal Rights Amendment failing; the same year, she said, Robert Bork's essay launched originalism, which she described as trying to freeze the machine in time.
She contrasted the constant patching and versioning of communication architecture with the slow, deliberative work of amending a constitution, mentioned that Anthropic has written a constitution for its own AI, and used "the artificial state" for private firms taking over the functions of nation-states.
She closed by saying it is not for robots to write our constitutions; people and nations must learn again to amend, or invent a new instrument to guarantee liberty, promote equality and avert the destruction of a habitable earth.

Interlude

Musical interlude: Partita (Morphosis)

Michael Cheng performed a solo violin piece written for the project and explained the idea behind it; Jasanoff then closed the evening.

Remarks

Day 2 welcome: what the project is for

McQuillan handed over to Jasanoff, who set out the project's aims, its six countries and the next convenings.

She said advances in science and technology seem to be escaping meaningful control by the people they are meant to benefit, and listed four casualties: shared facts, trust in experts, respect for norms, and the belief that might does not make right.
She said the project will not hold a world constitutional convention; over two or three years it will compare how the US, France, South Africa, the UK, India and Japan handle AI, the digital revolution, designer biotechnology and climate change.
She announced the second convening for the following month in Philadelphia with the American Philosophical Society, and a Paris convening in March centred on the common good.
She ended with an "imperfect translation" of a Tagore song, saying much of the project will consist of such imperfect translations.

Keynote

Opening keynote: lessons from a former head of government

Drawing on his time in office, Varadkar explained why elections change less than they used to, how Ireland used citizens' assemblies to prepare constitutional referendums, and what COVID taught him for AI governance.

He said elections matter less because markets, corporations, regulators, independent central banks and international bodies are stronger; people vote, see nothing change, and lose faith that choosing leaders matters.
He explained that Ireland's 1937 constitution was adopted by referendum and so can only be changed by referendum. In office he tried randomly selected citizens' assemblies: they had no decision-making power because they were not elected, but they gave cautious politicians the confidence to put bolder changes to a vote.
He argued AI cannot be put back in the box and differs from nuclear technology because it can redesign its successor and may be able to decide whom to target.
His lessons from COVID for AI: handle expert disagreement, weigh speed against precaution, communicate with the public, and build international consensus. He said the post-1945 institutions are no longer fit for purpose and, where global consensus fails, called for "plurilateralism," coalitions of the willing.

Discussion and Q&A

In Q&A Varadkar said democracy is much more than elections: it includes the rule of law, an independent judiciary, academic freedom, a free press, and ways for people to take part in decisions between elections.

Panel

Panel I: Thinking Constitutionally

Moderator: Sheila Jasanoff, Co-founder, McQuillan Institute

Four speakers looked at what is disrupting constitutional thinking today, from social theory, imagined futures, economic constitutions and the conceptual make-up of democracy.

Discussion and Q&A

An audience member pushed back on treating liberalism as singular: in 1912 Guthrie used "constitutional morality" at the American Philosophical Society to reaffirm a contractual order, and in 1948 Ambedkar used the same term in India's Constituent Assembly to break the caste order.
Calhoun replied that constitutions have gaps: capitalism grows parasitically on social institutions such as family and community that it neither creates nor renews.
Teachout said nobody would invent concentrated corporate power, as currently structured, as a legitimate form of power, and that each person getting a different price, feed and rating is incompatible with democracy.
Yadav said humanity should strive for universals but is at least a century away, so it should start from many particulars. He asked why we insist on one person one vote while someone can drown Bangladesh and its 200 million people have no vote in that decision.

Panel

Panel II: The Future of Progress

Moderator: Mathias Risse, HKS

Moderator Risse said we have entrusted the building of progress to people who put their own chance of dooming humanity at about one in three; four speakers discussed how to bring technological progress back under democratic control.

Discussion and Q&A

One questioner said talk of determinism overlooks how an imagined determinism can itself become a binding constraint through law, citing how Section 230 shaped today's internet.
Landemore said the populist wave is a symptom of missing agency; she worries more about the elitism of the system than the populism of the public, and the answer is to open the system so voices are heard.
Another panelist added a point from Dewey's The Public and Its Problems: there is a society reacting to its loss of political agency but no public, and the task is to create one.
Pfotenhauer said Germans fear a new kind of majority forming, and asked whether existing mechanisms of delegation, representation and legitimation still hold under current conditions.

Panel

Panel III: The Future of the Demos

Moderator: Aziza Ahmed, BU Law

The moderator asked who the people are when territorial and species boundaries grow porous, and what makes a valid claim in the people's name. Speakers answered through the census, legal personhood, the history of human rights, and the time of constitutions.

Discussion and Q&A

Igo said constitutions and declarations are both sacralized and seen as fictions or conventions, yet they have durable effects across generations.
Kysar said opening the category of personhood now is risky, noting that a multimillion-dollar NYU gift for research on consciousness and personhood is aimed mostly at AI. He described the paradox of "we the people," which claims to exist before the constitution yet can only be identified through it.
Liang said we hand the next generation a world broken politically, ecologically and constitutionally, and expect them to accept it obediently.

Panel

Panel IV: The Future of Expertise

Moderator: J. Benjamin Hurlbut, ASU

Moderator Hurlbut asked what underwrites the power of the few to know for the many and act on that knowledge. The panel answered through Franklin, the AI stack, international law and the disappearing library.

Discussion and Q&A

One panelist said the protests against data centres give her hope: people act locally because that is where they can have an impact, and realizing they outnumber the authorities lets them act together.
Another panelist warned against overestimating humans: beyond artificial general intelligence, do people really have "authentic general intelligence"?
Williams replied that her worry is that machine language favours the indicative mood and loses the subjunctive, the "as if," turning what might be into what is and making people more compliant.

Response

Closing reflections

Laurent and Sunder Rajan, who lead the Paris and South Africa convenings, offered reflections, and Jasanoff closed with the four cosmic images on the Institute's emblem.

Open questions

Filter by theme. Each question links to where it comes up.

B1Can constitutions still be amended, and by whom?

Lepore argued that legitimacy rests on amendability and that the US Constitution has seen no meaningful amendment since 1971, with age and polarization making change harder. Varadkar (Ireland's referendums) and Landemore (Iceland) showed ordinary citizens entering the amending process. Whether this travels to countries with very high amendment thresholds was left open.

Amending and correcting constitutionsLotteries, assemblies and participation

B2Real decisions are made outside the ballot

Varadkar said markets, corporations, regulators and independent central banks leave elections changing little; Slobodian said the ordoliberal "economic constitution" was designed to keep economic order away from democratic politics. Yadav said each link from opinion to policy rests on untested assumptions and proposed putting parties, media and money in politics into the constitution. How to restore the weight of elections without stripping such bodies of expertise was not answered.

Concentrated corporate and private powerExpertise and public reason

B3Who makes up "we the people," and how are they counted?

Calhoun argued that peoplehood has to be achieved; Igo said representation has rested on counting since the first census in 1790, and current fights over census rules decide who gets counted; Kysar said the close birthright citizenship ruling shows membership is unsettled. The open question: if official statistics lose trust, how can a people recognize itself?

Who the people are

B4The tools that make publics can also make them unnecessary

Igo grouped polls, focus groups and algorithms as technologies that summon publics, sorting them into those of, against and without the people. Teachout said personalized prices, feeds and ratings are incompatible with democracy; Fung worried that AI companions are built to capture attention. Which institutions could pull such tools back into the first category was not worked out.

Attention and the information environmentWho the people are

B5Who counts as a legal person?

Kysar said corporate personhood's mix of strong private rights and weak public duties is being carried over to AI and nature, and warned that AI personhood could be used to shift liability. Because gene editing lets us design the traits that confer status, he said, personhood is normative all the way down. Utah-style laws close the category, opening it invites liability shifting, and no one settled the trade-off.

Life sciences and the bodyThe language of rights and its limitsWho the people are

B6Is the AI stack already a constitution?

Stanger said the stack's architecture is a constitution whose default version concentrates power in one firm; Lepore called the trend "the artificial state"; Teachout said AI is concentrated at every layer; Williams said shifting texts leave lawyers nothing stable to cite. Stanger proposed federated local AIs founded by libraries, but who oversees their charters and what keeps them from re-concentrating remains to be shown.

Technology as a de facto constitutionConcentrated corporate and private powerExpertise and public reason

B7How "inevitability" and "innovation" move questions out of politics

Barba-Kay said AI firms pair inevitability with a promise of rescue; Fung said doomers and accelerationists share one determinism; a questioner added that imagined determinism can become real constraint through law, such as Section 230. Pfotenhauer used Saxony-Anhalt to show innovation promises do not buy political trust and that the effects of social media were never put to a vote. The shared question: how a democratic state regains the ability to decide what kind of innovation it wants.

Technology as a de facto constitutionTime, future generations, cumulative harm

B8Will AI empower people or subordinate them?

Fung split AI's effect on agency into empowering, replacing and subordinating, and said that with about three companies steering, subordination is the default. He named three conditions for changing course: countervailing power, public understanding and state capacity. Calhoun and Teachout described the same landscape in terms of corporate competition. Which condition comes first, and who pushes for it, was not discussed.

Concentrated corporate and private powerAttention and the information environment

B9How much can sortition and citizens' assemblies carry?

Landemore argued for sortition-based assemblies to set agendas, with pay, mandatory service and self-governance as design parameters; Varadkar said Ireland's assemblies were only advisory; Stanger cited Taiwan's deliberation experiments. Pfotenhauer doubted that new mandate mechanisms would escape capture by whoever controls them at scale, and Laurent said citizen panels must sit inside specific institutions. When an assembly's recommendations should bind was not agreed.

Lotteries, assemblies and participation

B10Where does expert authority come from?

Varadkar said experts disagreed during COVID and were sometimes captured; Kennedy argued the line between expertise and ideology or interest is exaggerated and governance knowledge is uncertain and contested; Teachout said economic experts in court displace the judgment of juries. Chaplin asked whether we can keep Franklin's scientific authority without its hubris. If expert authority is not neutral, who answers for decisions made under uncertainty remains open.

Expertise and public reason

B11Decided here, felt there

Yadav asked why we insist on one person one vote while someone can drown Bangladesh and its 200 million people have no vote. Kennedy imagined everyone having 20 votes for any election affecting their lives; Landemore imagined a randomly selected global assembly; Varadkar called for plurilateralism; Teachout imagined devolving power to societies of ten to twenty million. These point to different scales, and how they fit together was not discussed.

Plural universals and cross-national viewsLotteries, assemblies and participation

B12Stolen time and cumulative harm

Liang said authoritarianism steals an open future and that when a constitution dies by a thousand cuts the damage only shows in hindsight; Barba-Kay said technology moves too fast for generations to absorb; Lepore said the 18th-century Constitution places no limit on what humans do to nature. Liang's Shaheen Bagh example showed constituent power reappearing in the street. No concrete mechanism was offered for a constitution to speak for future generations or non-human life.

Time, future generations, cumulative harmAmending and correcting constitutions

B13What tools exist beyond the language of rights?

Engle said UNESCO's critics of human rights were papered over and pointed to data-centre opposition, which claims no new rights; it contests background rules of zoning, water, land use and ownership. Sunder Rajan relayed Albie Sachs: be skeptical of law's pretensions without being cynical about its potential. When rights and background-rule strategies complement or conflict is left for later convenings.

The language of rights and its limitsInfrastructure, war and rescue

B14Plural universals: whose constitutional experience counts?

Yadav said every concept in Western political theory carries "invisible brackets" and that thinking should start from many particulars; an audience member used Guthrie's and Ambedkar's opposite uses of "constitutional morality" to show liberalism is plural; Sunder Rajan called for provincializing American constitutionalism, and Jasanoff closed with "multiple universalisms, but also one." How to compare without treating the US as the default is a question for the convenings in the other countries.

Plural universals and cross-national views

Reading Boston with Philadelphia

The second convening met in Philadelphia on October 29, 2026, also on democracy, and the organizers presented the two as a two-part opening of the project. Philadelphia had Jasanoff's lecture and panels on citizenship and public reason since 1776 and on the ethics of invention at the frontiers of life. Both meetings shared the judgment that technology is becoming a de facto sovereign, that the story of technological inevitability weakens democratic self-determination, and that the relation between experts and popular sovereignty needs rethinking.

The emphasis differed. Philadelphia leaned toward intellectual history and judicial interpretation; Boston leaned toward institutions and practice. The amending process itself, independent central banks and the "economic constitution," legal personhood, the census, design parameters for sortition, and alternative architectures for the AI stack all arrived with Boston. Philadelphia was strong on diagnosis and thin on mechanisms; Boston offered noticeably more proposals, with a former head of government and a political activist on stage alongside scholars running institutional experiments.

On one point they disagreed outright: a Philadelphia speaker treated South Africa's positive rights as a cautionary tale of disillusionment, while in Boston Sunder Rajan, relaying Albie Sachs, treated South Africa as a source to learn from. Conversely, Philadelphia heard a proposal to protect attention constitutionally, while no one in Boston proposed such a right, discussing attention through personalized pricing, feeds and the capture of commons. Both meetings saw local pushback against technology, such as opposition to data centres, as a source of hope.

How this was made

The summaries here are the Institute's paraphrases, made from the McQuillan Institute's published recordings and their automatic captions. Automatic captions can be wrong and speaker turns are unlabeled, so please check any quotation or attribution by listening at the linked timestamps. Figures and facts stated by speakers have not been independently verified here. Prepared 2026-11-03.

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