An exploration of a broken if beautiful institution, The Law, launched with a particular case — LESSIG v. The New York Times. The show will track the development of that case — explaining each part as it happens as an introduction to the law — but then extend far beyond this particular case to the institution of the law generally.

Can we make 2020 something more than a civil war between Democrats and Republicans? That’s the challenge that has inspired this podcast by Lawrence Lessig. Without doubting the urgent need to defeat our current President, Lessig lays out a strategy that leverages the common ground that unites America, to the end of fixing our rigged and broken democracy. Drawing upon the history of other moments of fundamental change in America, Lessig maps a strategy that steps above our partisan divide. It is a moonshot, no doubt. But it is the one shot that could get us beyond the pathological division that destroys our government today. This is the conversation that the politicians won’t give us. And that’s precisely why we citizens must begin it now.

Lawrence Lessig and Laurence Tribe are among the most important and influential legal minds of this or any era. Lessig, a pioneer in the field of cyber-law, is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School and founder of Equal Citizens, a non-profit focused on the cause of electoral reform. Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor Emeritus at Harvard, is arguably the preeminent constitutional scholar of his generation, has argued 35 cases before the US Supreme Court, and was a key member of Al Gore's legal team in the 2000 Florida recount. Heilemann invites the Legal Larrys, as he calls them, to discuss Donald Trump's attempts to overturn the results of the presidential election, how his efforts have revealed serious weaknesses in our democratic processes, and the increasingly urgent arguments for scrapping the Electoral College.

There’s a kind of academic corruption that most people have never considered. Not plagiarism. Not cheating on an exam. This is the kind of corruption that occurs when corporations and industry lobbying groups pay academics for expert testimony before Congress. Even the perception that such payments have occurred will result is an erosion of public confidence in scholarly research and the impartiality of the academy. And the people most vulnerable to this ethical trap are those who believe they are doing good. As Furman professor of law Lawrence Lessig explains in this podcast, “doing good can make you bad."

We’re joined by the real-life Professor Lawrence Lessig, who appears as a character in this episode, played by the real-life Christopher Lloyd.

Here, Lessig and I discuss what corruption is, how to understand an institution’s purpose, whether capitalism is itself corrupting, our upcoming books about the media, how small donors polarize politics, Lessig’s critique of democracy, why good people are particularly susceptible to institutional corruption, whether we should ban private money in politics, and ways to reinvent representative democracy. So, you know, nothing too big or heady.

Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig joins to talk about how we can reform our democracy and save ourselves from this mess. Lawrence and Andrew discuss the cubicle farms where politicians dial for dollars, how "slow democracy" can improve our political discourse, and how we can reverse the decline of journalism in America.

Today’s episode features an in-depth interview with Prof. Lawrence Lessig, counsel for the Colorado faithless electors, about the electoral college system.

We also go through the answer to last week’s #T3BE about the differences and similarities between burglary and larceny. You won’t want to miss it!

Lawrence Lessig ran for President of the United States in 2016. He lost, and we got Donald Trump instead. Lessig is a Harvard Law professor whose book, "Republic Lost" outlines exactly how the swamp in Washington DC got so swampy to begin with.

Mike talks with Lawrence Lessig, the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School. Prior to his time at Harvard, Professor Lessig clerked for not one, but two of Mike’s intellectual heroes: Judge Richard Posner and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.