I first met Larry Lessig when he was still a college kid—bright, intense, and already organizing things. He ran the Model UN program for high schoolers, which my younger siblings participated in. His parents, Jack and Pat Lessig, were part of the Lycoming County Republican establishment back then. Jack chaired the county party, and when Brian McCarthy from Williamsport was looking for someone to run his congressional campaign in the northern half of Pennsylvania’s 17th District, it was Jack Lessig who vouched for me. That was 1982, the year George Gekas first ran for Congress. The district stretched from Dauphin County up the Susquehanna River to Lycoming, over 100 miles of political terrain. I got everything north of dauphin County and because of the length of the district we had another campaign manager for the state capitol Harrisburg. That was my first congressional campaign management role
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Larry, meanwhile, took a different path. He’s now the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School. Before that, he taught at Stanford and the University of Chicago, clerked for Judge Richard Posner and Justice Antonin Scalia, and founded Creative Commons. He’s written a shelf’s worth of books on copyright, corruption, and constitutional law, and he’s become one of the more visible voices in the “we need a lawyer” circuit—equal parts scholar and reformer.
These days, Larry’s pushing a constitutional amendment to rein in super PACs. His group, Equal Citizens, backed a Maine ballot initiative to cap contributions and provoke a legal challenge that might land in front of the Supreme Court. It’s a long-shot strategy, but classic Lessig: legally intricate, philosophically grounded, and aimed at the root of institutional dysfunction.
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/f025b3c8-90de-4b55-a4a2-a43d14ee6608/episodes/5e24387b-f9b3-40ab-9633-ca2bf71ab809/THE-CHUCK-TODDCASTTHE-MORE-TRUMP-SUCCEEDS-THE-LESS-POPULAR-HE-GETS--TRUMP-CANT-TURN-THE-PAGE-ON-EPSTEIN--WHY-AMERICA-NEEDS-A-CONSTITUTIONAL-CONVENTION?ref=dm_sh_FY1ULInTLt0jG5lbNDEx1AXqC