Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
To respond to the challenging times we are living through, physician, humanitarian and social justice advocate Dr. Paul Zeitz has identified “Revolutionary Optimism” as a new cure for hopelessness, despair, and cynicism. Revolutionary Optimism is itself an infectious, contagious, self-created way of living and connecting with others on the path of love. Once you commit yourself as a Revolutionary Optimist, you can bravely unleash your personal power, #unify with others, and accelerate action for our collective repair, justice, and peace, always keeping love at the center.
Announcer - 00:00:03:
Welcome to Revolutionary Optimism. Issues like economic hardship, a teetering democracy, and the worsening climate emergency have left many Americans feeling more despair than ever. Fortunately, physician, humanitarian, and social justice advocate Dr. Paul Zeitz has identified Revolutionary Optimism as a new cure for that hopelessness and cynicism. Once you commit yourself as a revolutionary optimist, you can bravely unleash your personal power, hashtag unify with others, and accelerate action for repair, justice, and peace. On this podcast, Dr. Zeitz is working to provide you with perspectives from leaders fighting for equity, justice, and peace on their strategies for overcoming adversity and driving forward revolutionary transformation with optimism. In this episode, Dr. Zeitz is talking with Lawrence Lessig. Lawrence Lessig is one of the most visionary legal scholars of our time. He's the Lawrence Lessig Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School, a founder of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford, and a relentless advocate for political reform. His work spans constitutional law, ethics, political corruption, and the future of democracy. With academic roots in philosophy, law, and economics, Lessig has shaped national discourse on campaign finance, digital freedom, and citizen empowerment. He's the author of several influential books and a leader in the fight for a more representative, participatory democracy. Lessig is now a leading democracy innovator, spearheading innovations like Frankly, Creative Commons, Deliberations.us, and Equal Citizens. Today we're asking, how can collective citizen action refresh our Constitution and create a citizen-driven democracy? And what will it take to get there? Here's your host, Dr. Paul Zeitz.
Paul - 00:01:50:
Hey, Professor Lessig. It's such a great honor to have you on the podcast today. Thank you for joining.
Lawrence - 00:01:56:
Thank you for having me.
Paul - 00:01:57:
We first met in 2011 during the Occupy movement. You came down to D.C.. And you gave talks to the crowds there. And that's when I first learned about your work. And I also had the honor to attend the 2012 event you had. On the Article V Convention. And that was an immense vertical learning curve for me to be part of that. And I've always seen you as the most courageous justice and democracy innovator out there. And all those things that you've done over the years, always innovating, always. Searching for the way forward. So thank you, thank you. For your service and for your leadership. So many people rely on your wisdom to guide us. And I'm one of those people. So thank you for all that you do.
Lawrence - 00:02:48:
I appreciate that.
Paul - 00:02:50:
I wanted to ask you to help my listeners make sense of this moment. We're recording this at the end of April 2025. We're hoping to air this in May of 2025. And so what is happening? What is your analysis of the state of our democracy? Are we in constitutional collapse? Are we in a crisis? Are we, where are we on this? Spectrum of the state of our democracy. So I think that would be a, give us a health report on the U.S. Constitution.
Lawrence - 00:03:24:
Well, I think there's a threat, an obvious threat. And the question is whether we're going to muster the resilience to fight back against it or whether we'll embrace it. You know, I mean, historically. There have been moments where presidents have tried to change the constitutional order. The most recent before this one was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who, after he was elected in his first 100 days, he and Congress passed a whole bunch of legislation which, under the existing rules of the Constitution, was plainly unconstitutional. And they fought as hard as they could to address what they considered then to be a national catastrophe, which is the ongoing effects of the Great Depression. And he was eventually slowed by the Supreme court, but he was successful eventually in transforming our understanding of constitutional law. And I think we should see that's exactly what's happening right now. The difference between the two is twofold. Number one, FDR rallied both the people and Congress to his side. And so what was reviewed by the Supreme court was a bunch of laws passed by Congress signed by the President. Donald Trump is not rallying. Congress to his side. I mean, even though he has majorities in both houses, nothing that's happening is happening because of a statute. It's just his own will. And obviously, the people have increasingly turned against what Trump is doing. So it's a very different kind of effort to change the Constitution. But we should not miss that it is an effort to change the Constitution. The kind of power that he is attempting to leverage is unprecedented in our history. And I think there's no better way to understand it. This sounds a little bit extreme, but I think it's true. There's no better way to understand it than power exercised through extortion. Because what he is doing is he is threatening illegal acts that is outside of his power as a way to coerce people into bending to his will. And his will means not just his policy will as President of the United states. But increasingly, the will to make his family even more wealthy. I was, you know, one of the stories which there are so many, but one of the stories which is kind of below the radar, but which really astonished me was a report from Vietnam. Bragging about how It had been negotiating with the Trump administration to deal with the threats of tariffs to Vietnam. And kind of third on the list of accomplishments was the announcement that they had negotiated a deal for a $1.5 billion Trump resort in Vietnam.
Paul - 00:06:27:
Oh, I'd never heard that. Oh, my God.
Lawrence - 00:06:29:
Yeah. You're like, how is this possible that you're negotiating tariffs for the United states? And oh, by the way, can we just get a resort in there? And so the idea that this is what Americans governments has become is astonishing. And the only question is now is whether we have the will, either Congress or the courts or the people to resist and push back.
Paul - 00:06:54:
Thank you for that clear analysis and for helping us make sense of this moment. It really was very helpful. I think that what you said is very aligned with the idea that this time, right now, it's the Constitution that we have to deal with. And, uh, You know, you remember when Clinton was running and James Carville came up with the line, it's the economy stupid. I don't want to say it's the Constitution stupid. I want to it's just but this time it's the Constitution, in my view. And we're hearing from our Democratic friends that they're focused on the 2026 election. What do you think about that? Because I'm like saying there may not be a legitimate election or there may not be an election or that isn't going to solve the problem. Right. That is not going to fix this situation that we're in. So I'd love to hear your analysis of the political sensibility about the timing that we're in and about the way forward.
Lawrence - 00:07:57:
Well, I think the reality is the courts don't have the capacity to resist the President on the full range of fights that he is waging against the law and the Constitution. The Supreme court decides a total of probably 75 cases every year. They could easily decide 75 Trump-related cases and still not be one halfway through the issues that are presented. The framers never expected that the courts would be our defender against tyranny or authoritarian government. They expected Congress would be. And of course, Congress has been absolutely pathetic in resisting the President. I mean, obviously, the Democrats have done what the Democrats can do, but they're in the minority. It's the Republicans and the fact that the Republicans have not stood up for principles that they themselves would articulate and defend. You know, when Trump starts talking about using the IRS as a way to go after the people he opposes, like Harvard University or other people who he opposes, when that was suggested, I think wrongly, but suggested that that's what the Biden administration was doing, every one of the leading Republican figures in Congress ran to the Fox News commentary to sort of say, this is outrageous. We will lose the whole character of America as a rule of law state if the President is able to take his power and force the IRS to start going after his enemies. But now we're those very same people. We don't see any of them attacking this. I think the one Republican in the Senate who has behaved in a consistently principled way, even though he's not yet announced himself as an opponent to the President, is Rand Paul, who is like fighting to stop the tariffs, to stop the emergency decrees that the President declares we are all operating under. Because, I think he realizes, and he's willing to stand up and fight, that what's happening now is literally unprecedented in our constitutional history. So when you say, like, should you be focused on 2026? I actually think the only way we're going to stop him is if we win in 2026. Now, it's a hard year to win. The Senate is not, the Senate elections are not favorable to the Democrats. And the House is always going to be razor thin because of gerrymandering. There's just a handful of really swing House seats that anybody could expect going the other way. And of course, Elon Musk has promised to primary any Republican who's not sufficiently sycophantish to the President. So it's not like it's an easy thing to imagine winning. But if things become as catastrophic as I think they could become. Because of these economic policies that are absolutely devastating, I think there's a chance that it could be a really critical defeat. And if there is a defeat, then Congress would have the will, the capacity to stop the President. And I think that's the only thing that's going to stop him right now.
Paul - 00:11:05:
Well, you said it's the courts, it's the people. It's the courts, it's the Congress, or the people. So we've covered... The courts, and now on the Congress side, I think I would like to ask you... I hear what you're saying. You think that if we win big in 2026, then we could put brakes on whatever he's doing. However, I would say from your own teaching, I've learned about the corrupting influence of dark money in politics. And I have personally lost complete confidence in the ability of our Congress to function in any legitimate way. Like, I hear that is a possibility. But can you talk about the corrupting influence of money in politics? You know, your work. You know, you help Pioneer represent us and all these efforts. There's three campaigns that I've identified right now, American Promise and Citizens United and a third one that are all focused on trying to overturn that ruling. But I don't even know if any of that is possible in the ways that they're pursuing it. So I'd love to hear, like, is Congress fixable when Citizens United is still the law of the land?
Lawrence - 00:12:17:
Well, I'm really glad you asked that question because this is the obsessive focus of what I'm working on right now. So the first thing is you're right. The problem is that we don't have just one problem. We have a number of problems, you know, like we're the patient on our way to the hospital to get chemotherapy, to deal with the deep cancer that is killing our body. And on the way, we get hit by a bus. So, you know, Donald Trump is the bus. Like we are now race to the hospital. We've got to deal with the fact that we've been hit by a bus. Assuming we get through that problem, assuming 2026 makes it so that we can at least stop the devastation that he is now spreading on our country. Yes, we still have the cancer that we have to address, and that is the corrupting influence of money. And we will get nothing if we don't fix that. Now, here's the big mistake people make. They say, like Bernie Sanders, my friend Bernie Sanders, who I have enormous admiration for, Bernie Sanders will say, Super PACs are the corruption of American democracy. Therefore, we have to overturn Citizens United. And as much as I would love to overturn Citizens United, the problem with that framing is there is zero, exactly zero chance the United states Supreme court is going to overturn Citizens United. It is not happening. Okay, but... The mistake that that framing makes is the assumption. That Super PACs came from Citizens United. They did not. Super PACs were created by a lower federal court decision three months after Citizens United called SpeechNOW v. FEC. In SpeechNOW v. FEC, the D.C. Circuit. Said that if you can spend unlimited amounts of money, follows as a matter of logic, you must be able to give unlimited amounts of money. And if you can't limit the amount you're spending under the Constitution, you can't limit the amount you're giving. That argument, though on the surface it has a certain symmetry to it, is plainly and obviously false. Because the logic that supports Citizens United... Is a logic that says you can only limit spending if you can show that there's a risk. Quid pro quo corruption, the this for that corruption. And it's true that if the spending is independent, quote unquote, There is no quid pro quo or put the other way around. If there's a quid pro quo, it's not independent spending. So the logic of that is solid. But when you turn to the contribution, the logic doesn't apply. And the best way to see that is to think of my favorite United states senator, Robert Menendez from New Jersey, who in 2015 was indicted. He was indicted for a quid pro quo, offering government favors in exchange for a contribution. The contribution was to his super PAC. So there was a quid pro quo and a contribution to a super PAC, the very thing that Citizens United, that SpeechNOW, said could not happen. Indeed, his lawyers had the chutzpah to file a motion to dismiss the indictment against Robert Menendez by saying, the thing you've indicted us for, the D.C. Circuit said can't happen. So therefore, we can't be convicted of this. Now, of course, that was a ridiculous motion. But the point is, it points out the mistake, the logical mistake at the core of SpeechNOW. And we have been engineering of free speech for people, took the lead originally, we and Equal Citizens have been trying to engineer a case to get it to the Supreme court so that the Supreme court can finally have a chance to correct that error. Because when that decision was made, Eric Holder, the Attorney General, decided not to appeal it to the Supreme court because he didn't think it was an important problem. He says it's a very small category of speech at the time. So he thought, there's no reason to take this up. We'll just, you know, don't have to worry about it. But didn't realize that was a loophole that was going to then, a Mack truck was going to be driven through that loophole. And that would create the most corrupting, most poisonous speech that we have in American politics today. So we last November. We last November. Working with activists in Maine, succeeded in getting an initiative in Maine passed by 74.9% that banned Super PACs in Maine. So directly against SpeechNow. That initiative is now being challenged in the courts. Equal Citizens has intervened. Neal Katyal, the former acting solicitor general of the United states under... Obama, is our lawyer. And we are, you know, right now, literally in two weeks, we'll be arguing in the district court. I expect the district court won't rule in our favor because most people think that's the rule. And then we'll go to the First Circuit court of Appeals. The First Circuit court of Appeals has never considered this question, so it's an open question for them. I think they get it right. And if they get it right, we're in the Supreme court. And if we're in the Supreme court, we have a real shot to get them to agree with us because all that we would be saying is apply your existing principles, the existing jurisprudence. Don't change anything. The existing jurisprudence to a set of facts you've never considered. And if you do that, then we win. And so I am optimistic that when the court actually gets this, gets a chance to consider it, they will give us the right answer. And that will end super facts, which is not the whole of the problem. Citizens United still, I think, needs to be reversed. And the only way to do it is to imagine a constitutional amendment, I think. But whether or not it's all of the problem, it's at least 80 percent of the problem. If you could take care of Super PACs, you would take care of 80 percent of the problem and radically change the corrupting influence of money inside of Congress right now. So that is the fight that we've got to win. And, you know, we're doing everything we can to raise the money to be able to support the litigation to make it so that we would win.
Paul - 00:18:26:
Wow, that was a breakthrough in my understanding in real time. I have heard about your work in Maine and the Maine case, but I have to be honest, I didn't fully understand the magnitude or the implications of it. So I'm so glad that now I get it and my listeners will also be able to get it. Thank you for that work and for your sharing that perspective. So lifting us back out to the constitutional situation we're in, Congress, okay, may be able to deal with this or maybe not. The people. And I want to bring us to your 2023 article, Making an Article V Convention Safe for democracy. I've read this several times in the last day, and I would like to ask you to explain the part of the article which I'm most excited about. I mean, the whole thing is really important. There is another movement afoot to convene an Article V con-con through the convention of states project that you know about, and that it actually formed right after your 2012 event on the Constitution. Mark Meckler went and formed the Convention of states. So I don't know if there's anything causal about that. But I saw your article here calling for Citizens' Assemblies in 14 states. To be an offensive defense against whatever momentum they might have. And I thought that was really super smart. And I wanted to ask you, that was back in 23, you wrote it. It's two years later. What's your analysis of the role of Citizens' Assemblies and also the threat of a MAGA-led Article V con-con as they're proposing?
Lawrence - 00:20:18:
I think actually the con-con-con, convention on the constitutional convention that we had here at Harvard was in 2011. Mark Meckler, who I'd known after he was one of the key instigators behind the Tea Party Movement, we got to know each other in that context, agreed to kind of co-sponsor it in the sense of like bring a whole bunch of his people and we'd bring our people and we'd have a conversation about it. He was not a supporter of Article V Convention at that point. It's after that conference that he began to think about this as a chance to bring about the kind of change he wants in the Constitution. And that's when he and others with him started the Convention of states. Now, he and I both, since then, have been fighting a, I think, a really misguided and just flat out wrong argument. That if there were an Article V Convention, it would be extremely dangerous because it could run away. And by run away, what the opponents typically mean, like common cause typically means, is it will take up issues that nobody expects it to take up. And Robert Reich has even said it could change the rules by which an amendment to the Constitution could be adopted. Okay. Now, I have long said, I've written in three of my books, this is just total craziness, none of this is true. But, you know, you can say as much as you want. You still have this active movement out there opposing Constitution Article V conventions because they're fearful. They're fearful it's going to blow up and destroy the opportunity for, you know, preserving constitutional values. Okay. But here's where things have changed. So in 2021, I'm sorry, not 2021, 2021, I lost a pretty important case in the Supreme court, 9-0. And that case was a case asking whether presidential electors. Could be bound to vote the way the state legislature wants them to vote. And I had volunteered to help get this question resolved because in the 2020 election, in the 2016 election, there were a bunch who said that they couldn't be bound. And we wanted to get this resolved. And so we got it resolved, actually not 2021. I'm forgetting this. We got it resolved in 2020. So in the summer of 2020, the Supreme court said, yes, presidential electors can be bound by their state legislatures. So that was a loss from the perspective of my clients, but it was a win from the perspective of an Article V Convention. Because if you can bind presidential electors to vote how you want them to vote, You can certainly bind, legally bind, in an enforceable way, the way delegates to an Article V Convention can vote. And if you can bind them to vote one way or the other, you can also bind them not to run away. You can bind them not to change the rules of the convention, not to pretend that they have the power to change how amendments will be adopted. You can bind them. And then what happened with the presidential electors is a court can come in and force them to vote in the right way or they're replaced. Okay. So the point is now we have on the table. Tools necessary to guarantee that a convention is safe. And that's these binding rules that would come from the state legislature or as the state legislature would take it up. And not surprisingly, Convention of states recognizes this. So they have been working with state legislatures, like Idaho now has a proposal to call for an Article V Convention. And they have language in the proposal that would bind the votes of the delegates to the Article V Convention from Idaho. Vote in the way that the state legislature tells them to vote. Well, you know, I think this is perfect because it's like, okay, fine. You want to bind the delegates to vote in the way that the state legislature wants them to vote. I think we should also imagine delegates being bound to vote in the way a citizen assemblies would want them to vote. Now, if you've never heard of the citizen assemblies, this is not going to mean anything to you. But anybody who's been anywhere close to citizen assemblies. Sees them as maybe the most hopeful form of Democratic deliberation and decision making that we have anywhere in the world right now. Because citizen assemblies is a random representative group of citizens. So random in the sense that nobody's running. You like randomly pick people out. Representative in the sense that you guarantee the right number of Republicans, right number of Democrats, right number of men and women. I don't know what the DEI, war on DEI will do about this. But the point is, it's supposed to be representative of the people. And so if you have random representative people who are brought together and given information that they need to understand the issue, and that information is presented in a balanced way representing both sides, and then they're given a chance to deliberate, small groups and in big groups. What we know from that process is that they come up with the most democratically intelligent results. Of any other representative body that we've got in the world, like better than Congress, better than any state legislature, I think better than the courts. So the point is, here it is, the gold standard of what we could aspire to as democracies. And so what I've proposed that we imagine saying that the state legislature will tell delegates to the Article V Convention from their state, they can't vote for any amendment. That the citizen assemblies from that state has not supported, and I just picked an arbitrary number, at a 60% level. So that's not to say that that amendment couldn't be proposed, could be proposed by Congress, but it is to say that the delegates from the state, let's say the state of Maine, can't vote for an amendment unless 60% of the citizen assemblies has supported it. So there is a Democratic check. On the convention process. And that Democratic check would transform Article V, the article that governs amendments, into the most progressive, hopeful infrastructure for amending a Constitution that exists anywhere in the world. Because now you would have a process not controlled by the insiders. This is the thing that Mark Meckler and I fundamentally agreed about. You can't have a system controlled by the insiders. So a system not controlled by the insiders, but also answerable to a Democratic view of what the people want, small d Democratic, as opposed to what, you know, these politicians want. Because, you know, the thing about state legislatures, and, you know, I know many state legislators, and I have enormous respect for them. But what we know about them is that they are even more extreme. Than Congress. Like, they are gerrymandered in an extreme way. They represent extremist views across the country. And the idea that we'd hand over the Constitution to them terrifies me as well. But I say, like, let's just have an argument about whether we should be handing over that judgment to the legislatures. We're handing over that judgment to the people in an assembly. And I think most people, when they begin to see it or understand it, would support the idea of the assembly.
Paul - 00:27:55:
Fantastic. I love that. That's so helpful to hear your vision on that. The idea of Citizens' Assemblies is the rage happening in the United states right now. It's happening globally, right? There's a deliberative wave. I think democracy is wobbling or collapsing globally, the rise of popular authoritarianism, populist-driven authoritarianism. So the democracy movement is saying, we have a solution. We have evidence now that it works. And there's been about a dozen examples of it in the United states. And now there's like a movement, Unify USA and many other stakeholders that are championing the goal of having permanent Citizens' Assemblies at the federal level and at the state level as part of a transformed democracy that is a citizen-driven democracy. So we're saying there should be a balance between elected and selected officials and that the citizens would always have a voice. The key thing, which I hope that one day we'll have to have another conversation about is like, how do we protect those permanent Citizens' Assemblies from the toxic influence of political parties and of dark money? Because I think they have to be special spaces where actual deliberation can occur, as I think you would share that. So thank you for your commitment to citizen.
Lawrence - 00:29:21:
Yeah-
Paul - 00:29:22:
Go ahead.
Lawrence - 00:29:22:
Can I just want to say on that? I think that's a completely plausible aspiration for where the movement could go. I guess I would caution the citizen assemblies movement advocates to not move too fast, because though democracy geeks, when they understand citizen assemblies and they see them work, get extremely excited about them. And they're like, yes, this is a solution to our problem. And, you know, in Britain, they're talking about replacing the House of Lords with a citizen assemblies. And in France, they want a permanent citizen assemblies that sits next to her. And you could talk in the United states, maybe we get rid of the Senate to just replace it with a citizen assemblies. The reality is, for most people right now, that's scary. That idea is scary. Because most people don't have an intuitive sense of what a representative group means. When you say, let's just pick random Americans and have them sit together and make important decisions, that terrifies most people. Because most people, when they see random Americans on TV, are seeing crazy people on TV. It's like, oh, no, no, no. Not those guys. It's scary. So what we need is a period of time where we demonstrate. We show, not tell. We demonstrate the sensibility in this process. And I think it starts by not trying to assert any power, not trying to assert any authority, but starts by just showing that we can do this better. So in the design that I'm describing for the convention, I think right now states should start creating citizen assemblies to consider some of the amendments that are being proposed in this convention process, like the... You know, term limits amendments, the Balanced Budget Amendments, the anti-Citizens United amendments or the money and politics amendments. Have them start deliberating on them. Let people see that these are, in fact, really sensible, balanced, like America speaking in the most constructive way it can speak. And then you can take the step of saying, okay, now the legislature for the state of Massachusetts is going to say you can't vote as a delegate unless our citizen assemblies is with you. That's the next step. And then you can start saying, let's ban them together so that they force the idea of Democratic accountability into the convention generally. But we need to be patient enough to recognize that if we get too far ahead of the people, it will be destroyed. It'll be too easy for the opponents to real democracy to do something to blow it out.
Paul - 00:31:49:
I hear you. And. I understand what you're saying. So thank you for sharing that perspective. I think it's important. If like, okay, so I sometimes pretend I have a magic wand and I want to ask you to pretend you have a magic wand. And suppose there was a movement afoot that responded to a constitutional collapse situation. And I'll use a medical metaphor since you did earlier, you talked about, you know, a cancer patient on the way to the hospital got hit by a bus. The medical metaphor that I am using is the heart of America has died or is dying. We're in the ICU, we're on life support and we need a heart transplant. You know, we, and as a physician, I was trained, you don't wait, you got to do some, and then you can grow into it. So I think we have a historical precedent in 18, in 1787, when they gather to amend the Articles of Confederation, and then they rewrote the whole thing. So I wanted to ask you if the American people assembled and decided to, you know, at the state level, and then maybe even a National Citizens' Assembly, and they proposed a refreshed Constitution, and we were able to demonstrate it was an authentic act of an bipartisan movement representing a large majority of the people. How could we, you know, what are the pathways for transforming our democracy with a refreshed Constitution? How could we get it ratified or adopted in your mind?
Lawrence - 00:33:25:
I'm not sure you can. You know, I mean, yes, you're right. There was a precedent in 1787. 1787 drafted the Constitution, but that Constitution was drafted against a precedent from 1776. And in both of those contexts, There was an understanding among the elites. That, um, that there's a natural law principle. Was articulated in the Declaration of Independence. We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal, and then all the way down it goes to say, and that they have an unalienable right to alter or abolish their Constitution. And so that was the precedent. That was the idea that gave them the sense that they could do it. And they did it and they got away with it. Okay, but we're talking about a couple thousand people. And we're talking about a couple thousand people in the world where, you know, there's not perpetual Twitter or, you know, Facebook news feeds or CNN or Fox News. And so those guys could get together and lock themselves in a room in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 and hash out a Constitution in secret. Right. I mean, there were not a lot. It was totally secret. And then appear with it and then do the work of like working with a couple thousand people around the country to get them to agree to call conventions in the states to debate them. And of course, there was extensive debate about them, but it was debate at a level that I'm not sure we can replicate today. And the other thing we learned about it. Was that there were a billion questions they didn't even understand they were addressing. Like the Constitution is a complex document. So, you know, I would match your like dramatic picture with a much humbler, but I think more plausible picture, which is not how do we rewrite the whole Constitution, but how do we start addressing the things we know right now are the lumps of cancer inside the body politic of this republic? And so the one we would start with is where you and I started money, like the corrupting influence of money inside of our system. I think you would get overwhelming support of the people for that. And then maybe term limits. Like, is astonishing. You've got these, you know, this gerontocracy running our government where, you know, the average tenure of a member of Congress was greater than the average tenure of a member of the Politburo under the Soviet Union. So, you know, the idea that we have the system that just entrenches these people and you can't is ridiculous. So I think Americans would support that idea as well. I think there are some fundamental changes we would support. And if we could get it through the convention process, then I think we could get it out to the states and ratify it. Now, if that didn't work, like if there's no way to get our existing system to work the way you describe it, I'm happy to start talking about this. You know, truths that we all take as self-evident, that we have the right to alter or abolish our form of government. But when you start talking like that... The other side starts deploying tanks and men in black boots. And, you know, in 1787... The technology of suppression was pretty imperfect. The Brits could have a big army, but they had muskets. What are they going to do? Today, it's a very different story. And if you start imagining the American government being threatened by a bunch of equivalent revolutionaries who say, look, we have had a citizen assemblies and here's our new Constitution. And we demand control of Congress now. I doubt that that would last 15 minutes before the army would be brought in and suppress it. So that's why I'm just skeptical of the fundamental rewriting of our Constitution movement. I think we should be talking about how to unite Americans around the fixes we all agree about. And I think that would go a long way to solving the biggest problems that we have.
Paul - 00:37:46:
Okay, great. Yeah, that sounds smart. I appreciate that. I wanted to ask you, have you ever talked to Mark Meckler about Citizens' Assemblies?
Lawrence - 00:37:56:
No, I'm not.
Paul - 00:37:57:
I wonder what that movement would think about the role of citizens and the opportunity to actually hear from real people. I've been imagining a conversation like that and how that would go. In terms of, I wanted to ask you, for Unify USA, we're starting in Colorado. We have an organizing team there. They've had a few Citizens' Assemblies. I'm heading out to the Fort Collins one this week to witness that. There is a statewide anti-partisan attitude there, they call it, and we're hoping that they're being willing to. You know, be one of the first states to have a state citizens assembly on the U.S. Constitution, whatever way they want to frame it. It could be narrow on the kind of issues that you talked about. I think that could be a good way forward. You know, I'm also talking to someone in Nevada, like a history expert, and they believe that if we're going to refresh the U.S. Constitution, even in the ways that you're describing, we also have to at the same time refresh the state constitutions. So I wanted to ask your opinion about that and how if you could explain to me, because, you know, I'm not a constitutional expert, you know, how the federal constitution like, just let's imagine we, we amended the federal constitution. Pick any reform you want. And then what are the implications of that for the state constitution? And do we have to do both? And how does that work?
Lawrence - 00:39:30:
Yeah, well, so first, let's go back to Colorado. I think what's happening in Colorado is critically, critically important. Because what we need in the... Revive democracy movement. Is for more people to see what the solution looks like. And I don't mean solution in the sense that I imagine getting rid of representative democracy and just having standing citizen assemblies. People need to see that we the people deserve respect. And if we put we the people in the right context, like a well-structured citizen assemblies, then I think people will look at what we do and say, wow, that deserves respect. So I think what's happening in Colorado is critical. And I hope that if Colorado becomes the first state to have a statewide citizen assemblies, it would be focused on these constitutional reform questions that are being teed up. And if it did that and they had like a series of them that came up with sensible answers to these constitutional reform questions, that would make it possible to make the next move to say, okay, Colorado legislature, you say that any delegate from Colorado attending an Article V Convention can only vote the way our citizen assemblies has said. And all of a sudden you have a path to amending the federal constitution that's bound and democratically accountable in a way people would be excited about. With respect to the second question.
Paul - 00:40:49:
Wait, wait, wait. Sorry, because I want to make sure I understand this completely because it's a very important point. So, the precedent of binding electors for the presidential election, do you think, I mean, is that automatically the precedent that would apply for delegates to Article V con-con?
Lawrence - 00:41:08:
Well, so –
Paul - 00:41:09:
Is that legally – I mean, you would make that case, but how does that really work?
Lawrence - 00:41:15:
Yeah, well, so first of all, We have a history of binding delegates in conventions. There was one constitutional amendment that was ratified by state conventions. That was the Twenty-first Amendment that repealed prohibition. And the reason they sent it out to state conventions is that the politicians were too cowardly to vote on that themselves because they were afraid both of the temperance movement and the people who wanted to be able to drink. It was just in the beginning of the depressions or just in the middle of the depression. So everybody wanted a drink and that's what fueled this along. So they sent it out to state conventions. And I think it's 26. I've got to go back and look at these numbers. But I think 26 states had rules that said that when you ran to be a delegate at the state convention, you had to say what your position was, pro prohibition or against it. And then you had to vote. According to what you said your position was. So they were binding statutes that locked them into voting the way they had promised. And so that precedent's already there. Now, it's not the case that the elector's precedent automatically carries over. But the argument you'd make is, look, presidential electors were plainly understood originally to be people who had discretion to vote however they wanted. And even these entities called, you know, identified in the Constitution have now been said to be capable of being controlled by the state legislatures. Well, if they can be controlled by the state legislatures, then so too should delegates to the Article V Convention be able to be controlled. So I think the argument is absolutely solid. I don't see it being resisted. And if it can't and it isn't resistant, then I think we have a way to make Article V Convention safe that we ought to be pushing to make sure that we have a way to amend the Constitution.
Paul - 00:43:03:
Thank you. That was really helpful. And then you were going to make, sorry, I interrupted you. You had a second point about my prior question, which I can't remember.
Lawrence - 00:43:10:
Yeah, you were asking about the relationship between federal constitution and state constitution. So, I mean, you know, we actually have a history of precedent to this as well. You know, when the Articles of Confederation were thrown out and the Constitution was adopted, in principle, what also should have happened was a bunch of states, the states needed to change their Constitution as well, because the Constitution was inconsistent with many of the state constitutions. But the way that that works out is that if there's an actual conflict, then the Supremacy Clause in our Constitution says federal constitutional law trumps state constitutional law. But where there's not a conflict, the states are still free to have their own vision of whatever. So for example, there's many cases now that articulate a stronger freedom in the state constitution, for example, a woman's freedom to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy or not, that could be protected under a state constitution, even though it's not protected under the federal constitution. So those are not inconsistent. And so therefore, that diversity is permitted.
Paul - 00:44:13:
Okay, thank you. That's very helpful. I'm so excited we're having this conversation. I'm learning so much, and I'm sure my listeners will be too. So now, as you know, we're 14 months almost from the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And I wonder what you are expecting around, what do you think is possible, you know, around this democracy renewal movement or this call for a citizen-driven democracy? We at Unify USA are using that celebration as an action-forcing opportunity. For the next 14 months, we're going to be pushing and inviting and engaging for this is the moment where we have to really mobilize. To protect and restore our democracy. I think if we make some progress along the lines that we've been talking, it could be something to celebrate then. That's what we're hoping. Now, we want to have a refreshed Constitution by then, and we want to bring it to popular vote using modern technology. And then we want to use that moral persuasion to catalyze the state legislatures to act and support it. We're going for 34 states minimum. So we get the critical level that the Constitution requires now of support for fixing, refreshing. And we're not saying throw out the, I really want to be clear about, we're saying reconstruct or refresh, like keep the good stuff and throw away the stuff that's not working and add in stuff that we know we need. So we're not saying throw it out. Obviously, there's some aspects of it that are, have kept our society together for all these 238 years. So we want to do this peacefully. So I think you're, you raised the security question, the backlash question with the, you know, the, there will be a backlash. So we are anticipating that. But the only way this can work in our view is if we have a massive movement of interpartisan leaders and the military and the police and the business leaders and the faith leaders and citizens really saying, we got to do this now. And then, then there's a swirl of possibility. And so we, you know, my, I'm an advocate. So we always like, I call it AFOs, action forcing opportunities. So we're seeing the 20, 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence as an AFO, an action forcing opportunity. So we're trying to use that to kind of generate, catalyze momentum and excitement and possibility. So I'd love to hear your take on that.
Lawrence - 00:46:57:
Well, I mean, you know, Paul, that I... Desperately want revolutionary change to our Constitution. You know that. But I think that it's important to remember actually what 1776 was. Like, if you look at it from our perspective, you see it as the first step on the way to a new form of government after we had the hiccup of the Articles of Confederation, which were a complete failure. But I think in 1776, what it meant was we had asserted our right against a tyrant and we were waging war against a tyrant. And from the perspective of like making a better democracy. It's unfortunate that that's like the first step. You know, it's been much cooler to move right on to the arguments in 1787 about like what the new Constitution should be. But we couldn't do that. We had to take the first step, which is to say the King George is a tyrant and here's all the terrible things that he's done. And that entitles us to rise up and to throw him out. And then we'll try to form ourselves into a government that it took, you know, obviously 12 years to be able to get to the place that we could we could do that. I don't know what 2026 is going to be. You know, many people think the fight is going to be a fight to throw out a tyrant, right? Because many people think right now what we have is a President who's behaving like a tyrant. And so if that's what it becomes. The really hopeful, constructive, pro-constitutional order, work that you're doing will be, you know, be obscured. I'm not sure what it will be, but I'm just saying that to the extent the movement is a movement in 2026 about Donald Trump. Going to be hard to have a movement for this new vision for what the Constitution is. But I want to understand one point about what you just said. You said you want 34 states to support it.
Paul - 00:48:57:
38.
Lawrence - 00:48:59:
Oh, I thought you said 34 in what you said. So that means you want 34 or 38 states to convene a convention? Or you want them-
Paul - 00:49:07:
At least 38 states to have state Citizens' assemblies. On refreshing the Constitution, generating language for how people would like to see it refreshed. And then all that would be fed into a National Citizens' Assembly, which would, you know, obviously there would be broad engagement of the public by then. And there would be an output of that of a National Citizens' Assembly that was drawn from at least 38 states having gone through this deliberative process. And then there would be a refreshed... Constitution, uh, that would be on the, that would be available, now we're saying, okay, let's do a national popular vote using technology- We need a technology enabled, uh, citizen-driven democracy, you're a leader in that. So, I don't, you know, I, I'm not going to go into that now. But then, it's like, okay, how do you do an omnibus amendment, to the current Constitution with the refreshed Constitution. And then get it through State legislatures or have State conventions, like they did around prohibition. And like, there's a convergence, and a possibility, I would say, of convergence, like with the, citizen movements that, is building right now. We see, I mean, people are outraged. Democrats, Republicans, interpartisan people are going out there and mobilizing. So that will continue, and so if we can, instead of just, uh, saying, see the thing is, is that Donald Trump is a tyrant, but the only way that he's been able to do, anything that he's doing, is because the Constitution has collapsed. And that's why we're saying it's the Constitution this time that has to be refreshed. We can't fix it, the next this is not a Romney presidency, we're that we're not going to be able to fix this with the 2026 election. He already wrote an executive order, on the federal elections. I don't even know, what the implications of that are. But he, you know, he's already wearing Trump 2028, he's not playing by the, the rules that we think are relevant. You know he's, that, that's gone in a way, but in his mind. So I think we're trying to, outflank him, with an bipartisan movement. And outflank this convention of states project, which is hyper-partisan, in their quest. Now some of their ideas are great, like you were saying, term limits and all that. But the way that they're going about it is hyper-partisan. So we're saying no, we want to have interpartisan. We want you at the table, but we all want to be there, and that's what Citizens' Assemblies as you said so clearly, could create that possibility. So that's, that's kind of the idea.
Lawrence - 00:51:47:
Yeah, but the question is, how do you translate? From the, let's imagine this wonderful document, this whole process produces. To a change in the Constitution. So one way to translate it is that Congress sends it out to the states after two-thirds of Congress votes for it. So we all understand the impossible task that represents. And if that's not the way in which it becomes part of our Constitution, then it's really back to the question whether we have revolutionary constituent power in America. And that's the point of anxiety I have. If you start teeing it up as a way of saying, we are repudiating the existing order. We are asserting our power to create a new order. Like the framers did with our Constitution vis-a-vis the Articles of Confederation. That's going to be a very challenging move to successfully to make with peace. And, you know, more power to you for pushing for people to think about these fundamental changes. I guess I would just say, it would be great if we could add to the menu of choices here. Opportunities that don't necessarily force us to imagine taking on the United states Government. Instead, hacks of the system that could like inject fundamental reform in a way that they can't resist. So, you know, if 13 states. Said you can't have a convention unless it's democratically accountable. And they started having citizen assemblies as the Democratic accountability. That's a plainly constitutional method for getting fundamental change into our existing regime. You can't sort of say that we're going to organize the militia against this revolutionary force. You're just doing ordinary politics. I just feel like that's a way to more plausibly get the kind of change you and I think has to happen in a context that we both think is necessary.
Paul - 00:53:56:
Yeah, I love that idea. That's so helpful. Yeah, maybe that's where we'll land. Who knows? But my fear is that I have children and grandchildren and my fear is that if we leave this unaddressed with a revolutionary transformation, we could have decades of tyrannical authoritarian rule in the United states and that is bad for our people, our fellow citizens and for the world. And I just don't think we should take that risk. Personally, that's where I'm at. And that's the movement that we're building. And I think I welcome you to help figure this out. We don't have the answers. We need everyone all hands on deck. And I promise to get you out for your next commitment. So we're going to have to wrap it up there. I look forward to connecting with you real soon. Have a great week. And thanks again for your amazing leadership and for all you do. Thank you.
Lawrence - 00:54:53:
Thank you, Paul.
Paul - 00:55:00:
I'm feeling a little emotional because that was one of the best podcasts I've had. That conversation with Professor Lawrence Lessig was so deeply educational and inspiring and challenging. And I learned so much from Professor Lawrence Lessig. And he declared himself committed to revolutionary transformation of our Constitution and our democracy. He's a strong supporter of Citizens' Assemblies as a way forward. And he has ideas about how to overturn the corrupting influence of dark money. He has a case that hopefully will come to the Supreme court on SpeechNOW case up in Maine. And then, of course, Overturning Citizens United. So. I am just, hopeful that as many people as possible can hear this podcast because this one is worth listening to. Peace.
Announcer - 00:56:03:
Are you ready to be part of the revolution? To learn more about Revolutionary Optimism, please visit revolutionaryoptimism.com. To get to know Dr. Zeitz, please visit drpaulzeitz.org. And to explore building movements, please visit unifymovements.org. If you like this show, be sure to follow on your favorite podcast app so you don't miss an episode. Revolutionary Optimism, transforming the world one episode at a time.