PERSON: Lawrence Lessig

Professor

Lester Lawrence “Larry” Lessig III (born June 3, 1961) is an American legal scholar and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. He is the founder of Creative Commons and of Equal Citizens. Lessig was a candidate for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president of the United States in the 2016 U.S. presidential election but withdrew before the primaries.

Lessig was born on June 3, 1961, in Rapid City, South Dakota to Lester Lawrence “Jack” Lessig II (1929–2020) who was an engineer and Patricia “Pat” West Lessig (1930–2019), a real estate agent. He has two older step-siblings, Robert (died 2019) and Kitty, and a younger biological sister, Leslie. He grew up in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1983 with a double degree BA in economics and a BS in management. He then studied philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge, receiving an MA in 1986. Lessig then returned to the United States to attend law school. He did his first year at the University of Chicago Law School before transferring to Yale Law School, and graduated in 1989 with a JD degree.

After graduation from law school, Lessig was a law clerk for Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from 1989 to 1990, and then for Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1990 to 1991.

Lessig started his academic career at the University of Chicago Law School, where he was professor from 1991 to 1997. As co-director of its Center for the Study of Constitutionalism in Eastern Europe, he helped the newly independent Republic of Georgia draft a constitution. From 1997 to 2000, he was at Harvard Law School, holding for a year the chair of Berkman Professor of Law, affiliated with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. He subsequently joined Stanford Law School, where he established the Stanford Center for Internet and Society.

Lessig returned to Harvard in July 2009 as professor and director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. In 2013, Lessig was appointed as the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard; his chair lecture was entitled “Aaron’s Laws: Law and Justice in a Digital Age.”

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