Peter Sagal’s Constitution Sessions - How to Save a Constitutional Democracy

Aziz Z. Huq is a scholar of U.S. and comparative constitutional law at the University of Chicago. He has worked on topics ranging from democratic backsliding to regulating AI. His award-winning scholarly work is published in several books and leading law reviews, social science, and political science journals. He has also written for the Washington Post, the New York Times, Dissent, The Nation, and many other non-specialist publications. In 2015, he received the Graduating Students Award for Teaching Excellence. He has an active pro bono practice. He is now on the board of the American Constitution Society, the New Press, and the ACLU of Illinois. Before joining the Law School, he worked as counsel and then director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Project, Senior Consultant Analyst for the International Crisis Group, and as a law clerk for Judge Robert D. Sack of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and also for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court of the United States. Aziz Z. Huq is the Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law. His books include The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies (2020), How to Save a Constitutional Democracy (2018) (with Tom Ginsburg), and Unchecked and Unbalance: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror (2007) (with Fritz Schwarz).

Tom Ginsburg is the Leo Spitz Distinguished Service Professor of International Law and the Faculty Director of UChicago’s Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression, as well as the Ludwig and Hilde Wolf Research Scholar, Professor of Political Science, and Faculty Director, Malyi Center for the Study of Institutional and Legal Integrity. His work focuses on comparative and international law from an interdisciplinary perspective. He holds BA, JD, and PhD degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. His latest book is Democracies and International Law (2021), winner of two best book prizes, and his prior books include How to Save a Constitutional Democracy (2018), written with Aziz Z. Huq, which won the best book award from the International Society of Constitutional Law; Judicial Review in New Democracies (2003), which won the C. Herman Pritchett Award from the American Political Science Association; The Endurance of National Constitutions (with Zachary Elkins and James Melton, 2009), which also won a best book prize from APSA; and Judicial Reputation (with Nuno Garoupa, 2015). He currently co-directs the Comparative Constitutions Project, an effort funded by the National Science Foundation to gather and analyze the constitutions of all independent nation-states since 1789.

Peter Sagal is or has been an author, journalist, playwright, columnist, foreign correspondent, podcaster, and, for the last 28 years, the host of the NPR news quiz Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, produced here in Chicago in collaboration with WBEZ. In 2013, he hosted Constitution USA with Peter Sagal, a four-part PBS documentary exploring how Americans live with and under the Constitution today. In the documentary, he traveled around the country on a patriotically painted motorcycle, talking to lawyers, plaintiffs, academics, immigrants and citizens, both born and newly minted, exploring how this nearly 250-year-old document still steers our nation and our democracy. Since then, Constitution USA has become a standard part of civics education in schools around the country, and Sagal has regularly lectured on the Constitution as an amateur Constitutional scholar and student. In 2008, Sagal accepted a Peabody Award on behalf of the panelists, crew, and producers of Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me! He's also won the Kurt Vonnegut Award for Humor from the Kurt Vonnegut Library. He's the author of The Book of Vice: Naughty Things and How To Do Them and The Incomplete Book of Running, a memoir about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and other adventures while running long distances. He's also contributed essays and reporting to The Atlantic, The New York Times, Chicago Magazine, Opera News, Saveur, Finesse, and for a decade was the "Road Scholar" columnist for Runner's World.