Lawrence Lessig è Roy L. Furman Professore di diritto e leadership presso la Harvard Law School. Prima di tornare ad Harvard, ha insegnato alla Stanford Law School, dove ha fondato il Center for Internet and Society, e all'Università di Chicago. Ha lavorato per il giudice Richard Posner presso la 7th Circuit Court of Appeals e il giudice Antonin Scalia presso la Corte Suprema degli Stati Uniti.
Lessig è il fondatore di Equal Citizens e un membro fondatore del consiglio di Creative Commons, e fa parte del consiglio scientifico dell'AXA Research Fund. Membro dell'American Academy of Arts and Sciences e dell'American Philosophical Society, ha ricevuto numerosi premi tra cui un Webby, il Freedom Award della Free Software Foundation, il Scientific American 50 Award e il Fastcase 50 Award.
Una volta citato dal New Yorker come "il più importante pensatore sulla proprietà intellettuale nell'era di Internet", Lessig ha spostato la sua attenzione dal diritto e dalla tecnologia alla "corruzione istituzionale", relazioni che, sebbene legali, indeboliscono la fiducia del pubblico in un'istituzione, in particolare in quanto ciò influisce sulla democrazia.
Lessig ha conseguito una laurea in economia e una laurea in management presso l'Università della Pennsylvania, un master in filosofia presso l'Università di Cambridge e un JD a Yale.
One Way Forward: The Outsider's Guide to Fixing the Republic pdf da 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.