A Constitution for the 21st Century · 02

Philadelphia

In the society Franklin founded, ten speakers took up three matters: who may know on the people's behalf, whose lives biotechnology may rewrite, and whether a constitution lives in its text or in the way people live.

When: October 29, 2026
Where: Benjamin Franklin Hall, American Philosophical Society
Theme: Democracy

On October 29, 2026, the American Philosophical Society (APS) and the McQuillan Institute for Science, Technology, and the Human Future held the second convening of the series "A Constitution for the 21st Century" in Philadelphia. Two panels ran in the afternoon. In the evening Sheila Jasanoff, co-founder of the McQuillan Institute, gave a public lecture, Linda Greenhouse responded, and the floor was opened for questions.

The organizers asked what innovations in constitutional thinking humanity needs to regain control of its common future in a borderless world being reshaped by science and technology. The first panel examined what experts and citizens have been expected to know since 1776 and on what grounds each may govern. The second turned to gene editing, life under war and climate disaster, and the picture of the human person that law should start from. The evening lecture treated a constitution as a way of life.

This page sets out each speaker's argument in our own words, links every point to a moment in the recording, and lists the open questions the day left behind. The whole event is one YouTube recording, and every timestamp refers to it.

Key takeaways

1A shared diagnosis: data, genetic and AI technologies, and the firms that build them, now settle matters that constitutional processes used to settle. Hurlbut said AI and similar technologies set themselves up as de facto sovereigns by declaring themselves inevitable; Greenhouse called the public reaction a "populism of despair".
2Three concrete proposals came out of the day: Burnett would have a constitution protect citizens' attention; Musunuru would ban human embryo editing outright; Greenhouse would align desires, promises and what government can actually deliver before writing new rights.
3Several speakers moved the discussion from facts to persons. Hurlbut asked what we owe one another as a political question; Burnett said we lack a substantive account of persons and their transcendent value; Snead started from fragile, dependent bodies; Petryna asked whose risks the exposed are carrying.
4Jasanoff argued that a constitution lives in the constitutional culture people live by, and also takes shape at moments of technological rupture. She proposed borrowing constitutional vocabulary from other civilizations, such as the Chinese term "ecological civilization" and the rock edicts of Ashoka.
5Greenhouse and Jasanoff openly disagreed on positive rights. Greenhouse, citing South Africa, said rights promises a state cannot keep breed "toxic disillusionment"; Jasanoff held that positive rights still set a different benchmark even when they go unmet.

Programme

Remarks

Welcome

Makoto Takahashi, Executive Director of the McQuillan Institute, introduces the project's question and itinerary and reads the framing for the first panel.

He describes the event as the second in the McQuillan Institute's first international project, "A Constitution for the 21st Century", co-organized with the American Philosophical Society.
The project plans events at sites of constitutional significance in the United States, France, South Africa, the UK, India and Japan over two and a half years, with essays published regularly on the institute's website.
The framing for the first panel: political theory has long debated the legitimacy of those elected to decide in our name, while leaving implicit the constitutional status of the experts and institutions tasked with knowing for the people.
Placing Jefferson's faith in citizens' reason at one end and the recent Supreme Court ruling against expert agencies in Loper Bright v. Raimondo at the other, he asks how far experts have a right to govern in our name by virtue of specialized knowledge.

Panel

Panel 1: American Citizenship and Public Reason since 1776

Three speakers approach expert knowledge and popular sovereignty through Enlightenment history, the attention economy, and science and technology studies (STS). Bentley Allan (Johns Hopkins), who was listed, was absent because of illness.

Discussion and Q&A

A former state and local official asked what the coming reckoning might look like, mentioning South Africa's truth and reconciliation model and participatory democracy. Another audience member said power had gone unmentioned: denying easily proven facts and attacking knowledge institutions without offering replacements are exercises of power, and the scale and speed of today's media change the incentives for being believed.
Rosenfeld doubted the past can be restored or that fixes such as citizen deliberation panels can rebuild a common thread, because the truth problem reflects how little now holds society together: the left points to extreme economic inequality, the right to the absence of a common culture. Civil society and schools are essential, she said, but they need a more shared economic and cultural footing.
Burnett and Hurlbut sparred on stage. Burnett asked why Hurlbut did not credit the fusion of horizons that interpretive conversation can achieve; Hurlbut agreed with the goal but said participation rules that ask people to leave their comprehensive doctrines at the door exclude some of them before the conversation begins.

Panel

Panel 2: The Ethics of Invention at the Frontiers of Life

Moderator: J. Benjamin Hurlbut, Arizona State University

An artist, a gene-editing physician, an anthropologist and a legal scholar ask what scientists, citizens and states owe as technologies gain power over life itself, and what picture of the human person ethics should begin from.

Discussion and Q&A

An audience member observed that debates on the ethics of invention often rest on three binaries, fact and fiction, mastery and protection, the individual and what exceeds the individual (generations, communities, infrastructure), and asked the panel how to complicate them.
Kawakubo said extremes sometimes meet on the far side, and imagined holding the discussion only in music, taste or smell to expose the limits of language and knowledge. Musunuru said treatment, prevention and enhancement often admit no clear line. Petryna asked that life and the conditions of life be thought together, noting that for some people the need for protection is already present today.
Closing, moderator Hurlbut took Franklin's house and the saying that necessity is the mother of invention as a prompt: which human needs, and which imaginations of human need, drive the project of invention?

Lecture

Public lecture: A Constitution for the 21st Century

An APS host first describes the society's history and work and introduces Jasanoff and Greenhouse. Jasanoff then starts from 18th-century salons and coffee houses and argues that a constitution lives in people's constitutional culture and needs a wider vocabulary.

She recalls the salons of the late 18th and early 19th centuries (Rahel Varnhagen's, whose biography Hannah Arendt wrote) and the coffee houses, and cites a historian's view that the scientific revolution was completed only when science joined politics in a democratic public sphere. We have lost that capacity to talk across walks of life, she says, and fall back on binaries.
She describes the Constitution re-encased in special gas and glass at the National Archives, a holy of holies for a secular nation, with its interpretation entrusted to "the nine", whom she compares to the nine in The Lord of the Rings and the one ring.
Borrowing Kuhn's normal science, she proposes normal law: the Dobbs majority overturned Roe on the ground that American law offered no support for an abortion right before the 20th century, citing Hale's 17th-century treatise. She cites a 2022 New York Times article on reasoning in a Delhi High Court marital-rape case that echoed Hale's view of marriage, as evidence of how far American constitutional argument travels.
Her central claim: constitutional cultures are full ways of life, and we should watch how people interpret the Constitution in their own lives, as when a Gold Star father held up a pocket Constitution on television. From an STS view, she adds, constitutional moments also arise from technological ruptures such as July 16, 1945, when Oppenheimer is said to have reached for the Bhagavad Gita.
She calls for a different constitutional vocabulary, citing the Chinese term "ecological civilization", Ashoka's edicts carved all over a rock face open to anyone's view (set against the sealed parchment), and an Indian youth movement that pairs education with nation-building as rights. Under the unitary executive theory, she says, the president almost is the Constitution.
She closes with T. S. Eliot's Little Gidding: knowledge, curiosity, science and technology need a "zone of reverence" around them, a belief she says she heard from every speaker that day.

Response

Response and open discussion

Linda Greenhouse reads public fear in three cultural snapshots and discusses courts, the states and the risk of positive rights; she and Jasanoff then take audience questions, and the evening ends on mobilizations of hope.

She offers three cultural snapshots: this week's New Yorker cartoon "The Evolution of Man" (a caveman for BC, a man with a beer for AD, a blank panel for AI); Aaron Sorkin's new film on what Facebook/Meta has become; and an Atlantic cover reading "Choose your overlord: Musk vs. Bezos". Carnegie, Rockefeller and Mellon, she notes, at least left a philanthropic architecture still in use.
She names the moment a "populism of despair", set against the populism of possibility of the early 20th century: the public feels it cannot control what is happening, and generative AI outruns even its makers' understanding. Attorneys general of both parties, she says, are pressing for controls on large data centers.
Congress has passed no useful legislation in decades, she says, so these issues fall to the courts, which are the wrong place for them: once an issue is in court it loses the democratic buy-in this moment requires. She compares the multibillion-dollar Meta settlement to the tobacco settlement a generation ago.
She points to the states: license-plate cameras installed under contracts with a private company met a backlash, and she says many places have cancelled those contracts. People want respect, she says; they do not want to be commodified or have their personal information chopped up and sold behind their backs, and the word respect runs through the Declaration of Independence.
Her caution: the constitutions written after the Soviet collapse and the end of apartheid promised rights to education, health care and housing; South Africa's government could not deliver them, and a "toxic disillusionment" soon set in. The US Constitution is one of negative rights. She urges aligning our desires, our promises and our realities.

Discussion and Q&A

On the states: Greenhouse said everyone fears an Article V convention running away, and urged systematic watching of state action on issues that shape daily life. Jasanoff said the swing between center and states is bounded by American capitalism: when lawsuits have challenged powerful national interests, the Supreme Court has stamped out state innovation, with the recently argued case on state liability for fossil fuel companies as her example. Comparison across countries, she said, should start from the stakes behind lawsuits; their legal forms differ from place to place.
On translating the debate for outsiders: Greenhouse drew on the gene-editing line between therapy and germline change and said AI needs a similar line between helpful and terrifying uses, which policy has not yet drawn. Jasanoff said we should take the impossibility of translation seriously; Oppenheimer reached for the Gita because it reflects on mass destruction.
On what a constitution should contain: Jasanoff said positive rights give a different benchmark even if unmet, noting her disagreement with Greenhouse. She named a debate not yet held: who should be the custodian of a person's memory, and by what rules. The Google Spain case put the onus on the individual, while in America one person against a giant company usually needs a class action.
On preserves from AI: an AI engineer relayed his mathematician brother's crisis and asked whether some fields could be kept for human discovery. Jasanoff said this needs prior normative agreement that some value is not to be compromised, as with deadly-virus research; the writers' guild strike drew such a line; and bioethics could extend to non-physical interventions into consciousness.
On a populism of hope: Jasanoff said she has never understood the distinction between populism and democracy, which she called two faces of one coin. She cited the marches before the Berlin Wall fell, Serbian students, the late mobilization in Brazil's election and youth climate movements as mobilizations of hope, and said the institute's stance is a belief that people fundamentally want to care for one another.

Open questions

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

P1Who may know on the people's behalf?

The organizers noted that American politics argues over the legitimacy of elected officials while leaving the constitutional status of experts and institutions implicit, with Loper Bright as the current marker. Rosenfeld described two failures: expert monopoly leads to technocracy, and monopoly by "the real people" to demagogic authoritarianism. Where expertise belongs in a constitution, and to whom it answers, received no institutional answer that day.

Expertise and public reasonWho the people are

P2Is the dispute about truth, or about who counts as an expert?

Rosenfeld said people have split into epistemic camps and truth has turned from the starting point of debate into its object. Hurlbut argued that everyone relies on experts and disagrees about who they are, and treated public-reason rules that demand shared facts first as a form of discipline. If shared facts cannot be presupposed, what public discussion should start from remains open.

Expertise and public reasonAttention and the information environment

P3Should attention be constitutionally protected?

Burnett argued that deliberative democracy depends on habits of attention, that commodifying attention erodes them, and that a 21st-century constitution should protect citizens' attentional lives. Hurlbut cautioned in the Q&A against a story in which devices alone did this to us. Who would owe duties under such a right, and what would count as a violation, was not worked out.

Attention and the information environmentThe language of rights and its limits

P4Can technology make itself sovereign by declaring itself inevitable?

Hurlbut argued that AI and similar formations set themselves up as de facto sovereigns through an inevitability they declare, while democracy demotes itself to passivity in democracy's name. Greenhouse said the public now sees the tech magnates as a threat, citing an Atlantic cover titled "Choose your overlord". The speakers offered a diagnosis; no one proposed a mechanism for constraining such de facto sovereignty.

Technology as a de facto constitutionConcentrated corporate and private power

P5May people who do not yet exist be edited?

Musunuru would pursue somatic therapy at full speed and ban human embryo editing, because future generations cannot consent, withdraw or seek recourse. He also granted that treatment, prevention and enhancement often admit no clear line. How that line holds when consenting adults seek enhancement, or when one country bans what another allows, was not discussed.

Life sciences and the bodyTime, future generations, cumulative harm

P6What account of the human person should law start from?

Snead would start from finite, fragile, interdependent bodies and concluded that law must first consider the most vulnerable. Burnett said we lack a substantive account of persons and their transcendent value; Hurlbut made what we owe one another a political question while warning against any position that claims to be universal. Which account of the person may enter public lawmaking in a plural society, and the tension among the three, went undiscussed on stage.

Life sciences and the bodyWho the people arePlural universals and cross-national views

P7Who carries the burden of systemic harm?

Petryna said harm cascades through power, water and hospital systems while legal and moral frameworks are built around identifiable acts and perpetrators. The knowledge produced under bombardment and wildfire comes from people who never consented to be test cases, and she asked who bears the risks and who benefits. How act-by-act frameworks can address cascading harm, and how the benefits of such knowledge should be shared, remain open.

Infrastructure, war and rescueTime, future generations, cumulative harm

P8Does a constitution live in its text or in how people live?

Jasanoff criticized the enshrinement of the Constitution and interpretation by tradition, with Dobbs as her example, and described the unitary executive theory as making the president almost the Constitution. She asked that attention go to how people interpret the Constitution in their lives and to how technological ruptures create constitutional meaning. How a living constitutional culture would gain institutional force was left undeveloped.

Amending and correcting constitutionsTechnology as a de facto constitution

P9With Congress stalled, should issues go to the courts or the states?

Greenhouse argued that issues lose democratic buy-in once they reach the courts and urged attention to state action. Jasanoff warned that state innovation is bounded by capitalism and by the Supreme Court, citing the fossil fuel liability case. Which level should govern technology when federal legislation is absent drew answers pointing in different directions and no conclusion.

Lotteries, assemblies and participationConcentrated corporate and private power

P10Positive rights: a warning or a benchmark?

Greenhouse, citing South Africa, said constitutional promises of education, health care and housing that went unmet produced a "toxic disillusionment", and urged aligning desires, promises and realities. Jasanoff replied that positive rights set a different benchmark even when unmet, citing an economist's view that America substitutes cheap mortgage debt for a right to housing until a crisis like 2008. How many positive rights a new constitution should carry was left as an open disagreement.

The language of rights and its limitsPlural universals and cross-national views

P11Who should be the custodian of our data and memory?

Greenhouse said people want respect and do not want their personal information sold behind their backs, citing the backlash against license-plate cameras. Jasanoff said databases reportedly hold the traces of a life so fully that they know our preferences better than we do, yet who should keep a person's memory, and under what rules, has not entered public debate; Google Spain placed the burden on individuals, who usually need a class to take on a giant company. What the custodial rules should be went unanswered.

Concentrated corporate and private powerThe language of rights and its limits

P12Should some fields be kept free of AI for human discovery?

An AI engineer described mathematicians' crisis of purpose in the face of AI and asked whether constitutional terms could set aside fields AI will not enter. Jasanoff said this needs prior normative agreement, pointed to deadly-virus research and the writers' guild strike as precedents, and suggested bioethics could cover non-physical interventions into consciousness. Who would draw such lines, and how they would be enforced, was not discussed.

Technology as a de facto constitutionThe language of rights and its limits

P13Can constitutional vocabulary be borrowed from other civilizations?

Jasanoff cited "ecological civilization", Ashoka's rock edicts and the demands of an Indian youth movement in calling for a different constitutional vocabulary. In the Q&A she said comparison across countries should start from the stakes, and that translation always loses something whose impossibility we should face. How borrowed words would gain legal force, and who judges what translation loses, were not taken up.

Plural universals and cross-national views

P14Beyond a populism of despair, is there a populism of hope?

Rosenfeld said little now holds society together and small fixes cannot restore the common thread; Greenhouse called the moment a "populism of despair". Jasanoff said she does not see a clear line between populism and democracy, and named the marches before the Berlin Wall fell, Serbian students, the late surge in Brazil's election and youth climate movements as mobilizations of hope. How such mobilization becomes lasting institutions was not discussed.

Who the people areLotteries, assemblies and participation

Reading Philadelphia alongside Boston

Opening her lecture, Jasanoff called Boston and Philadelphia a two-pronged introduction of the project. Boston, held September 11 to 12, 2026, took democracy as its theme, with keynotes by Jill Lepore and Leo Varadkar and four panels: Thinking Constitutionally, The Future of Progress, The Future of the Demos and The Future of Expertise. Philadelphia ran one afternoon and evening, with two panels, a lecture and a response.

Shared ground: technology and its builders as a de facto constitution or sovereign (Philadelphia through Hurlbut's analysis of discourse, Boston through structural accounts of a concentrated AI stack and proposed alternative architectures); the inevitability narrative; the standing of expertise; gene editing (human embryos and consent in Philadelphia, legal personhood and engineered status in Boston); and local backlash (license-plate cameras and data-center controls in Philadelphia, anti-data-center organizing in Boston). Attention came up in both, but only in Philadelphia did a speaker, Burnett, propose protecting it constitutionally.

The two convenings diverge on South Africa's constitution. In Philadelphia, Greenhouse used its positive rights as a warning; in Boston, Sunder Rajan relayed Albie Sachs, a drafter of South Africa's bill of rights, on being skeptical of law's pretensions without being cynical about its potential. Philadelphia added judicialization (Greenhouse), systemic harm and the distribution of risk (Petryna), medical aid in dying and the most vulnerable (Snead), and the custody of memory (Jasanoff). Boston covered amendment procedures, sortition and citizens' assemblies, and power exercised outside the ballot, which Philadelphia did not take up.

The density of proposals also differs. Philadelphia's concrete proposals come down to three (protect attention, ban embryo editing, align promises with capacity), and Rosenfeld said outright she had no panacea; Boston put forward more institutional designs, including alternative architectures for the technology stack, design parameters for sortition and citizens' assemblies.

How this was made

Summaries on this page are the Institute's paraphrases of the published APS recording (YouTube, automatic captions) and do not reproduce the speakers' wording. The captions do not mark speaker changes, so some attributions are inferred from context; the captions render the opening speaker's name as "Matt", and we follow the organizers in writing Makoto Takahashi. Before quoting or citing any view, listen at the linked timestamp to check the wording and the attribution. Prepared 2026-11-03.

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