Lawrence Lessig

An op-ed by Lawrence Lessig. Earlier this week I launched a committee to explore the possibility of running in the Democratic Primary to be a very different kind of president. As I explained then, the run would be a referendum around a very simple idea: that if, as Elizabeth Warren puts it, “the system is rigged,” then we need a plan to fix that rigged system. My plan is a referendum. My candidacy would be a referendum. Elected with a single mandate to end this corrupted system, I would serve only as long as it takes to pass fundamental reform. I would then resign, and the vice president would become president. The most common (polite) reaction to this obviously implausible idea was two words: Bernie Sanders.

Lawrence Lessig wants to be president—for a day. The Harvard law professor, who says his top priority is to “unrig this rigged system,” is launching an unconventional bid to be what he calls a “referendum president.” His idea is straightforward: If elected, Mr. Lessig would take action to overhaul campaign-finance laws and end what he describes as voter suppression and partisan gerrymandering. Then — perhaps even after a single day, though he acknowledges that’s “hopeful”—he would step aside and let his vice president lead. He says he would consider Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders or Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren—who has repeatedly said she does not plan to run—to join him on the ticket.

A few weeks after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, she was summoned to Geneva by her Swiss counterpart to discuss an urgent matter. The Internal Revenue Service was suing UBS AG to get the identities of Americans with secret accounts. If the case proceeded, Switzerland’s largest bank would face an impossible choice: Violate Swiss secrecy laws by handing over the names, or refuse and face criminal charges in U.S. federal court. Within months, Mrs. Clinton announced a tentative legal settlement—an unusual intervention by the top U.S. diplomat. UBS ultimately turned over information on 4,450 accounts, a fraction of the 52,000 sought by the IRS, an outcome that drew criticism from some lawmakers who wanted a more extensive crackdown. From that point on, UBS’s engagement with the Clinton family’s charitable organization increased...The flood of donations and speech income that followed exemplifies why the charity and its fundraising have been a running problem for the presidential campaign of Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic front-runner. Republicans as well as some Democrats have raised questions about potential conflicts of interest. “They’ve engaged in behavior to make people wonder: What was this about?” says Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig, who is a Democrat. “Was there something other than deciding the merits of these cases?”

Leave it to Berkeley: This city, which has led the nation in passing all manner of laws favored by the left, has done it again. This time, the city passed a measure — not actually backed by science — requiring cellphone stores to warn customers that the products could be hazardous to their health, presumably by emitting dangerous levels of cancer-causing radiation...Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School, and Robert Post, the dean of Yale Law School and an expert on the First Amendment, have agreed to defend Berkeley pro bono over claims that the legislation is unconstitutional. “The First Amendment is being contorted to all sorts of wrong ends,” Mr. Lessig said. “We’re not intending to challenge the science of cellphones,” Mr. Lessig said. “We’re just making people aware of existing regulations.”

An op-ed by Lawrence Lessig. For the first time in modern history, the leading issue concerning voters in the upcoming presidential election, according to a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, is that “wealthy individuals and corporations will have too much influence over who wins.” Five years after the Supreme Court gave corporations and unions the right to spend unlimited amounts in political campaigns, voters have had enough...Real reform will require changing the way campaigns are funded — moving from large-dollar private funding to small-dollar public funding.

Two legal heavyweights are poised for battle over just how far the city of Berkeley, Calif. can go in compelling speech by mobile phone retailers...In the other corner, representing Berkeley, is Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig...‘‘I know both Ted Olson and Larry Lessig well and think extremely well of them both. Both of them are extremely smart, imaginative lawyers who are bound to do excellent work in this lawsuit,’’ Laurence Tribe, another constitutional law professor who works with Lessig at Harvard, told Bloomberg BNA.

The cell-phone industry, leery of any attempt to link its products to radiation, sued Berkeley on Monday over a new ordinance requiring consumers to be warned that carrying a switched-on phone in their pockets or bra might exceed federal safety standards....Berkeley officials said they were confident the ordinance would be upheld. Councilman Max Anderson, the measure’s lead sponsor, said the warning language was taken directly from manufacturers’ statements in product manuals. Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig, helped to draft the ordinance and has agreed to defend it without charge. “I believe Berkeley has a right to assure its residents know of the existing safety recommendations,” Lessig said by e-mail.

...But Bobby Jindal, the Ivy League educated Rhodes Scholar who once pilloried his fellow Republicans by demanding they no longer be the “stupid party,” may also have a trick up his sleeve, a legitimate reason to think that he could, at the very least, quickly but quietly build a competitive campaign. That reason’s name is Timmy Teepell, and he is almost certain to be the man behind the curtain of Jindal’s anticipated presidential campaign...“First we have contract soldiers, now we have contract government officials,” Lawrence Lessig, the Harvard Law professor and author of the book “Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress and a Plan to Stop It,” tells me. “It’s a beautiful way to evade the law — and increasingly common.” To be sure, as Lessig implies, evading the law is not the same as breaking the law.

It’s not often that the talk after a film is the highlight of the night. But judging by audience reaction, that was the case Thursday as Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig stepped onto the stage at Seattle’s Town Hall. The audience roared and lept to its collective feet as Lessig placed his Mac on the lectern. The evening’s first course may have been the awarding-winning documentary, Killswitch, but for many in this audience, Lessig was the real attraction.

...Harvard Law's Lawrence Lessig (@lessig) talks about money corrupting politics and how to fix it.

Doug Hughes, the Florida postal worker who landed a gyrocopter on the U.S. Capitol grounds last month and set off alarms about airspace security, made a lower-key return to the nation's capital Wednesday. He arrived by car, wearing a GPS-enabled ankle bracelet that transmits his every move to federal authorities. He's no less passionate, however, about the cause that could cost him his job and freedom — overhauling the nation's campaign-finance system and ending what he sees as the rampant corruption on Capitol Hill...Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor and a leading voice on campaign reform, emailed Hughes after his arrest and "thanked him for his service," Lessig told USA Today. Sometimes, Lessig said, "you need outrageous behavior to draw attention to the outrageousness of the existing system."

They’re back at it. The super PAC to end all super PACs – Mayday PAC– has started its 2015 grassroots efforts to lobby members of Congress to pass campaign finance reform laws. You might remember that Mayday PAC was started in 2014 by Harvard Law School professor, author, and activist Lawrence Lessig, in part to get candidates elected to Congress who are willing to change the way campaigns are funded. Things didn’t go as planned. Nearly every candidate the group supported in last fall’s elections failed. As the Mayday website says, “… in the campaigns, we didn’t move the ball far enough. So in 2015, we’re doing something different.” The group now wants to help voters connect with the members of Congress it has selected as “potential leaders.” It is asking supporters to sign a letter to the 47 congressional members “who Mayday believes could be the key to unlocking a majority,” according to a PAC statement.

Berkeley City Council on Tuesday unanimously passed the first reading of a “Right to Know” ordinance to require cellphone retailers in Berkeley to provide consumers with information that warns them to keep a minimum safe distance between their bodies and their phones...City staff had assistance from Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Harvard, and Robert Post, dean of Yale Law School, in drafting the ordinance. Lessig has offered to defend the city pro bono if the law is challenged, as expected, by cellphone manufacturers...“How I carry it is how people should not carry it,” Lessig said. “I carry it in my back pocket.”

The City Council of Berkeley, California last night unanimously voted to require electronics retailers to warn customers about the potential health risks associated with radio-frequency (RF) radiation emitted by cell phones, moving a step closer to becoming the first city in the country to implement a cell phone "right to know" law...The Berkeley law is more narrowly tailored. "This ordinance is fundamentally different from what San Francisco passed," Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, who helped draft the Berkeley law, told the council at last night's meeting. He has offered to defend the measure in court pro bono. "San Francisco's ordinance was directed at trying to get people to use their cell phones less. This ordinance is just about giving people the information they need to use their phone the way it is intended."

The Berkeley City Council voted unanimously 9-0 Tuesday night to pass the cell phone "right to know” ordinance that supporters say is about protecting the public....Advocates for the Berkeley ordinance say they are prepared for a legal fight. They've already enlisted the help of Harvard Law School's Lawrence Lessig. "This is not about telling people not to use cell phone. It's just saying here's the information you should know and make your own decision," said Lessig, a constitutional law expert.

Of all the winners of the 2015 Webby Awards, the winner of the law category might have the most lasting effect. And not just because it’s a groundbreaking project. Rather, perma.cc got the nod for an effort that could help solve a major problem for legal analysts and academics: the tendency, over time, of a hyperlink to “rot,” or lose its original URL...The project emerged from the work of three Harvard Law School researchers—professors Jonathan Zittrain and Lawrence Lessig and student Kendra Albert—who noted that only half of all links used in recent Supreme Court decisions were still active at the time they published a 2013 paper on the topic...“Libraries are in the forever business,” Harvard Library Innovation Lab Director Kim Dulin said in a news release. “We developed Perma.cc to allow our users to protect and preserve their sources, no matter where they originate.”

An op-ed by Lawrence Lessig. Since the Supreme Court cleared the way for unlimited independent political expenditures by individuals, unions and corporations, there has been a fierce debate among academics and activists about what the term “corruption” means. For five justices on the court, “corruption” means “quid pro quo” — a bribe, or an exchange of a favor for influence. But an almost unanimous view, certainly among Democrats, and even among many Republicans, has emerged that this is a hopelessly stunted perspective of a much richer disease. Certainly, quid pro quo is corruption. But equally certainly, it is not the only form of corruption. Even if no deals are made, the influence of special-interest super PACs is a corrupting influence on American democracy.

The presidential hopefuls haven't spent much time so far with voters. Instead, they've committed many days to courting the millionaires and billionaires who can fuel a White House bid. And at the same time, activists on the left and right are seeking to redefine political corruption, which they believe this is. ...Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School, founded of Mayday PAC, a superPAC intended to fight unlimited money in superPACs. He and Teachout agree on the idea that corruption is a system problem. Lessig presents the issue as one not of equal political speech, but of equal rights. "We are talking about equal rights as citizens, equal right to participate in the political process," he says. "That's precisely the equality which has been destroyed by the way we've allowed campaigns to be funded."

When Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig was named director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics in 2008, he said he would create a limited-time project to research the problem of institutional corruption in the United States. He launched that project, the Edmund J. Safra Research Lab, in 2010, as a five-year effort to study the issue and come up with tools to understand it and respond to it better. On Friday and Saturday, a two-day conference called “Ending Institutional Corruption” will mark the end of that project, with dozens of speakers from academia, law, government, media, mind sciences, and citizen groups discussing the topic...Harvard Law Today spoke with Lessig recently about the lab and his future plans.