CEL Annual Lecture - The Place of 'Institutions' in the Idea of 'Corruption'

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In this talk, Professor Lessig introduces the idea of “institutional corruption,” and uses it to understand pathologies in important public institutions, especially the United States Congress. 

Speaker

• Professor Lawrence Lessig, Roy L. Furman Professor of Law, Harvard University

Chair

• Richard Moorhead, Professor of Law and Professional Ethics, UCL Faculty of Laws, and Director, Centre for Ethics and Law

About the speaker

Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School, director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, and founder of Rootstrikers, a network of activists leading the fight against government corruption. He has authored numerous books, including Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Our Congress—and a Plan to Stop It and One Way Forward: The Outsider’s Guide to Fixing the Republic. Lessig serves on the Board of Creative Commons, MapLight, Brave New Film Foundation, The American Academy, Berlin, AXA Research Fund and iCommons.org, and on the advisory board of the Sunlight Foundation. He is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Association, and has received numerous awards, including the Free Software Foundation's Freedom Award, Fastcase 50 Award and being named one of Scientific American's Top 50 Visionaries.

Lessig holds a BA in economics and a BS in management from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in philosophy from Cambridge, and a JD from Yale. Prior to rejoining the Harvard faculty, Lessig was a professor at Stanford Law School, where he founded the school’s Center for Internet and Society, and at the University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court.