“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,[1promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
“People of the United States”
The phrase “People of the United States” has sometimes been understood to mean “citizens.” This approach reasons that, if the political community speaking for itself in the Preamble (“We the People”) includes only citizens, by negative implication it specifically excludes non-citizens in some fashion.
It has also been construed to mean something like “all under the sovereign jurisdiction and authority of the United States.”
The phrase has been construed as affirming that the national government created by the Constitution derives its sovereignty from the people, as well as confirming that the government under the Constitution was intended to govern and protect “the people” directly, as one society, instead of governing only the states as political units. The Court has also understood this language to mean that the sovereignty of the government under the U.S. Constitution is superior to that of the States. Stated in negative terms, the Preamble has been interpreted as meaning that the Constitution was not the act of sovereign and independent states. In short, although in some ways the meaning and implications of the Preamble may be contested, at the least it can be said that the Preamble demonstrates that the federal government of the United States was not created as an agreement between or coalition of the states. Instead, it was the product of “the People” with the power to govern the People directly, unlike the government under the Articles of Confederation, which only governed the People indirectly through rules imposed on the states.
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