Lawrence Lessig est titulaire de la chaire Roy L. Furman de droit et de leadership à la Harvard Law School. Avant de retourner à Harvard, il a enseigné à la Stanford Law School, où il a fondé le Center for Internet and Society, et à l'Université de Chicago. Il a été greffier du juge Richard Posner à la Cour d'appel du 7e circuit et du juge Antonin Scalia à la Cour suprême des États-Unis.
Lessig est le fondateur d'Equal Citizens et membre fondateur du conseil d'administration de Creative Commons, et siège au conseil scientifique d'AXA Research Fund. Membre de l'American Academy of Arts and Sciences et de l'American Philosophical Society, il a reçu de nombreux prix, dont un Webby, le Free Software Foundation's Freedom Award, le Scientific American 50 Award et le Fastcase 50 Award.
Autrefois cité par le New Yorker comme « le penseur le plus important en matière de propriété intellectuelle à l'ère d'Internet », Lessig s'est concentré du droit et de la technologie sur la « corruption institutionnelle » - des relations qui, bien que légales, affaiblissent la confiance du public dans une institution - en particulier car cela affecte la démocratie.
Lessig est titulaire d'un BA en économie et d'un BS en gestion de l'Université de Pennsylvanie, d'une maîtrise en philosophie de l'Université de Cambridge et d'un JD de Yale.
One Way Forward: The Outsider's Guide to Fixing the Republic pdf par Lawrence Lessig
Something is clearly rotten in our Republic. Americans have lost faith in their politicians to a greater degree than ever, resigning themselves to the best Congress money can buy, as the comic Will Rogers once put it. It doesnt matter whether they are Democrats or Republicans, people are disillusioned and angry as hell. They feel like outsiders in their own nation, powerless over their own lives, blocked from having a real voice in how they are governed.
But all of this can changewe have the power. Lawrence Lessig, the renowned Harvard Law School professor, political activist, and author of the bestselling Republic, Lost, presents a clear-eyed, bipartisan manifesto for revolution just when we need it the most. One Way Forward is a rousing, eloquent, and ultimately optimistic call to action for Americans of all political persuasions. Notable in these viciously partisan times, Lessig pitches his address equally to Occupy Wall Streeters, Tea Party Patriots, independents, anarchists, and baffled citizens of the American middle. Despite our serious political differences, he argues, we canand mustchange the system for the better.
At the core of our government, Lessig says, is a legal corruption. In other words: money. The job of politics has been left to a tiny slice of Americans who dominate campaign finance and exert a disproportionate influence on lawgivers as a result. This, he writes, is a dynamic that would be obvious to Tony Soprano or Michael Corleone but that is sometimes obscure to political scientists: a protection racket that flourishes while our Republic burns.
We dont need to destroy wealth, Lessig declares. We need to destroy the ability of wealth to corrupt our politics.
With the common-sense idealism of his hero, Henry David Thoreau, Lessig shows how Americans can take back their country, and he provides a concrete and surprisingly practical set of instructions for doing it.
In a season where Americans are poised between the hope for real change and the fear that, once again, they wont get it, One Way Forward charts a course to a thrillingly new American future in which every citizen has a voice that matters, no matter how fat his or her wallet.