Transcripts For CSPAN2 Lawrence Lessig They Dont Represent Us 20240713

Ladies and gentlemen, remember when you wake and sleep at the National Constitution Center Affiliates it too should america chartered by congress to disseminate information about the u. S. Constitution on a nonpartisan basis beautiful. That sounded great. There is no more important part of our great nation and to disseminate the most import ideas in america for promoting nonpartisan constitutional reform and we have several upcoming programs that i will plug including december 2, we will host a breaking news town hall on what the constitution says that impeachment and we will bring together a range of legislators and scholars to discuss the history and constitutional dimension of the impeachment process. December 5, Judicial Center on the Fourth Amendment and privacy historical perspectives in december 6, should be a moving program called that the girl in the picture remembering vietnam and it will include the heroic human rights activist who has a child was immortalized in the infamous napalm girl photo with her running down the street and she will be with mark bowden in the provident composer hannibal cuvee whos written in oratorio paying tribute and i think it should be an extraordinary evening. Now, we will start a very special program. We are going begin by discussing the extremely important new book by Lawrence Lessig they dont represent us reclaiming our democracy. Lawrence lessig is one of americas most important constitutional theorist with the new book on how to interpret the constitution and at the same time he has published this culmination and refinement of his thoughts about constitutional reform that bring them together and italicized way and this is the first stop on his book tour and im honored he will be here with us. Please join me in welcoming him. [applause]. And after larry and i talk a bit about his great new book i will bring into very distinguished people to join us on the question of whether we need a Constitutional Convention to achieve the reforms that he and they urge and each of them is an american leader for a different reform. How rich is the chairman of the Organization Us term limits which works to establish term limits at all levels of government and he has some very powerful ideas about term limits and then daniel apps has just written a very powerful article about how to change the composition of the Supreme Court that mayor pete cited in the last president ial debate. His most recent article, how to save the Supreme Court and publishing a gale law journal and is getting widespread attention. Please join me in welcoming how we rich and daniel at. [applause]. Larry, not argue here to talk about the book in one of many striking notions you begin with was an apology. You say you have been talking about the importance of campaignfinance reform, but come to realize thats just one part of a larger problem of an unrepresented america. Tell us what you mean about how america and the american constitution is unrepresented . Actually, but important session is that i dont feel i have been disciplined enough to talk about this in a way that could actually bring allamericans into the conversation. We liberals find it very easy to talk about our issues and selfrighteous and convinced way , in a way that speaks primarily maybe exclusively to liberals so talking about money and politics part triggers for many people a signal, arguing liberal or not a liberal even though there are many great conservatives who are also concerned about money and politics, its a dividing discourse as opposed to united this court discourse. When i ride wrote this book i actually believe that kind of enthusiasm you demonstrate you said this was your your congregation and you demonstrated the congregation when you got so excited about the idea that this is a nonpartisan effort and i think this is extremely important. The book ends with stories of these incredible Reform Efforts led by people who have a single central rule that partisan politics is not allowed to be part of the conversation, so this extraordinary woman katie, a twentysomething put a Facebook Post up and said his unit anyone interested in working on gerrymandering in michigan and within a couple months had 4000 volunteers and within a couple months it collected 400,000 signatures to get a ballot measure on the ballot to an person gerrymandering and in that effort you had a discipline that said never can you say democrats or republicans that we had to inspire people to want to be part of this movement as a citizens first because we are citizens first and we all embrace that and there is such a deep desire that we should be able to talk about politics without the hate and division, which defines politics right now that was the motivation to write this book and what i realize as i thought about what i really was upset about when i talk about money and politics is that its an example, one example of the way that we have allowed our Representative Democracy to become unrepresentative. Many conservatives will tell you we dont have a democracy we have a republic, but by a republic they meant a Representative Democracy and its kind of built into the title. The thing about a Representative Democracy is its supposed be representative to allow all of us to feel like we all have the same political power inside the system, that the fact you are why doesnt mean you have more power than black or men than women or you live in kansas versus texas, but that we have allowed the system of our democracy to evolve so that we on many dimensions dont have a quality in her system, so when he and politics is the most obvious and members of congress, candidates for congress, 30 and 70 of their time are spent raising money to fund their campaign, but they are not met raising money from the average person they dont just randomly dial numbers. They are raising money from the tiniest fraction of the 1 , 150,000 americans have a normas influence roles relative to the rest of america. Thats when we wrote liberals like to focus on, but gerrymandering is a way of rendering as unequal in the way that we representatives, the elections of our representatives of congress. Its divided into districts that states draw with the objection to create safe seats in their district, so if you have a safe seat republican district you know if you have a republican them representative you wont be even bad democrat and the reverse. You are not worried about party from the other side. You are worried about someone from your own party. You could be beaten by someone in your primary, but what we know about primaries is the people that win primaries are even more extreme versions of the people they are challenging, so if you are republican you are worried about an even more rightwing republican. If you are democrat, you are worried about a less Leftwing Democrat which means in these districts 85 of congress in a safe seats they are constantly focusing to their extremes which means that extremists have enormous influence over our congress way beyond their numbers, way beyond what they are entitled to if you just think about making everyone representative or think about the electrical Electoral College. We have this impression of the United States of america elects our present. Is not true. We have delegated the election of our president took country called swing state america. Swing state america, the 14 or so states like pennsylvania which is close enough to go either way is the place that selects our president. In 2016, 99 of Campaign Spending within 14 state, 99 , which means it these are the only states the president cares about and there are all sorts of data to show spending and regulatory policy bends to make swing states happy. You may not feel happy, but you are happier than a lot of people because you really matter. The new jersey people dont matter at all so like look at this latest administration when trump came to office, he immediately ended the offshore drilling ban almost overnights florida got an exemption from that. New jersey cant even get a hearing because who cares about new jersey. New jersey is a solidly blue state and will never matter to a president ial election, about florida by consulting is a critical swing state, but the thing about swing states is they dont represent america, i mean, you are decent citizens. I come from pennsylvania, but swing stators in general dont represent america. They are older. They are whiter. Their industry isnt cutting edge industry of america, so i think you should be represented like anyone else, but you should not be represented the more. The way we suppress votes, the point is that these all together and what this means is that on any number of dimensions we have built a Representative Democracy that does not represent us. Sometimes it benefits the rich, money and politics, sometimes it benefits the extremist, gerrymandering and sometimes it benefits swing stators, Electoral College and sometimes abets benefits the party and power whether democrat or republican. Doesnt matter which of the dimensions, the point is the core promise of a Representative Democracy that we are equally represented has been defeated in our democracy and that is the core reform we have to find a way to implement. Such a powerful analysis, powerfully bipartisan as you say were nonpartisan. Your constitutional theory book talks about translating the values of the framers in light of new understanding and changes in society do what to a degree did the framers anticipate unRepresentative Democracy and to what degree is our current Representative Democracy a violation of the hopes of the framers and maybe start with the senate, which has changed over time, but you argue was not what they expected. So, the senate was a gate great compromise especially for madison as you know, but also wilson looked at the senate is a terrible compromise. Medicine for a while that he was not even agree to the constitution which he helped birth because of this insistence that there be equal representation for the states in the senate because he thought it didnt make sense to have a Representative Democracy with a branch that was essentially unrepresentative, but many people thought of the branch not as representing the people, but as representing states and this was a moment in our constitutional history where the idea of mixed Representative Government was familiar the british model where you have the crown and the lords and the commons. Each representing a different part of British Society in one. Many people thought our constitution in the same way, not that the senate was representing aristocracy by the senate was representing states and house was representing people and the president in some sense representing everyone so the senate was a comp minus. I think the challenge for us is to figure out what we understand the senate to be today because as much as they took seriously the senate as representing states, and they made senators appointed by state legislators, we dont have senators appointed by state legislators anymore 30 they are appointed by esther elections and the gap between big states and small states is humongous compared to that and then the difference between delaware and pennsylvania was like 17 to one and now the difference between california and wyoming is like 70 to one, so the unrepresentative call by the set caused by the senate is massive and huge so i in this book acknowledge that if you think that Representative Government in both grudges are representing people we have a real comp rising in context of the senate, but the challenge with the senate is that the constitution explicitly makes it on the mendel that there would be two senators from every state, the one part, to things in article five of the constitution that are said to be on amendable, one is the cause which protected slave trade until 1808 and the other was the cause that requires equal representation in the senate, neither of those two things can be changed without changing article five, so in my book what im saying is we are kind of stuck with this, but what can we do to change the way the senate works to try to get it as close to representative as we can and my own senses like if we can solve these other problems, this is relatively a small problem that would be remaining in this unrepresentative Representative Democracy. Part of this book argues our institutions are failing because of ways the framers didnt anticipate, failing to represent the considered and thoughtful use of the moderate majority of the American People instead have been pulverized and made more extreme by these institutional failures, but you are also critical of we the people for failing to educate ourselves about important constitutional issues and to perform the duty, as you call it, of the citizens in the way the framers anticipated and you have all sorts of explanations including our fractured media landscape. Tell us about how we the citizens are failing our constitutional values. I mean, the congregation of natural Constitution Center probably doesnt recognize this, but not everyone is as focused on these issues as you might be. And part of the reason this is such a problem is kind of unappreciated coincidence that happened in the 20th century, so the family or thing about the 20th century was the explosion of the broadcasting and we had this period of time, which people like marcus prior from princeton refer to as the period of the broadcast democracy. When america, all of us is focused on essentially the same sources every single day Like Television is on, at the same time every day its the news. Of the news is delivered to us in a relatively down the road middleoftheroad way, you cant help but be exposed to it at what youre being exposed to is essentially the same story and that period from 1950 to 1985, for us to find our conception of what america what american democracy is. The second thing that happened during this time that we dont think about a lot is that its the birth of polling, also. Polling really captures the National Imagination with the election of fdr in 1936, where the disk then dominance straw Poll Technology said landed with beats fdr handed George Gallup said no, i can talk to thousand people and i can tell you not only will he lose and lose by a lot, but i will tell you by how much and everyone laughed at George Gallup, but of course when roosevelt won the largest majority in any contested election in the history of president ial elections, people were convinced there was something to the technology and that gave birth to a technology where we can actually hear like the people were legible, we knew what they thought and with those two things growing up together during broadcast democracy, we could watch the people progress on many important issues whether its civil rights, which obviously is driven dramatically my television confronting people with the reality of the horrors going on in the south and we evolve in response or vietnam or the impeachment of Richard Nixon or the environment, these are all issues where we grow up and we can see has going up because we can pull. We have now left broadcast democracy. In the some ways we have gone back to the 19th century. We live in a world where media is partisan and fragmented and we all live in our own little bubble. And the consequence of that is profound when we think about Critical National issues that we as a nation need to address like impeachment. The striking thing about the impeachment of Richard Nixon is if you look at the polls and the views of republicans and democrats, of course republicans like nixon where the democrats, but with support for next and its almost perfect correlated between republicans and democrats. Exactly at the same moment everyone starts to not like nixon because we are all watching the same news and its the same story and you know you may have different reaction if youre conservative or or republican, but the point is the facts are the facts and you begin to bend it to the facts and mixing goes from 88 or 85 support among republicans six months before he resigns to 50 plus support among republicans and thats when they walked over to the white house of that you need to resign. In this environment, thats not reality. In this environment we watch our shows, they watch their shows and regardless of what happens they will come out of this some thinking i cant believe this is what happened and the other part of us thinking i cant believe anyone didnt know this was going to happen. Regardless of what happens we will have people who dont understand how it dont even understand the other side other than the part that i i just asked people can you explain to me why that person disagrees with you. Its not just that we knows he disagrees, you dont even know why he disagrees with you and this is because we have built this environment, this media environment where we live in these separate universes. Barack obama about two months ago set if you watch fox news you live in a different reality from if you read the new york times. Well, it when you live in a democracy you have to address the same issues together and what happens when we are living in different realities . Heres where the import connection to polling comes in. In some sense this was true for the whole of Human History except this broadcast democracy period took in the 19th century people also live in their own reality. North and south lived in their own reality which is what led to the civil war. The difference now is that we can see how different we are. We actually reinforce our views on the basis of our different realities, so the legibility of us means that the kind of craziness of our current views is transferred to everyone and i worry that we begin to lose confidence in the very idea of democracy through the more we see just how crazy we are. Of course, we wont go back to the 1970s i do want to go back to the 1970s, but i think we need to think about how do you build a democracy the world where you know we will all be living in these different realities . How do we get together and knit together and understanding on top of that reality that can begin to be something that represents america in a way that makes us confident and hopeful. Talk about how you think we can build that america and we will talk about the particular reforms you propose another the Constitutional Convention is necessary, but first lets talk about the suggestion that we need civic juries and that properly formulated deliberations modeled in the Constitutional Convention itself introduced citizens to diverse viewpoints and can lead to more outcomes that may inform even if they didnt determine policy outcomes. I had this weird experience of traveling to mongolia in may, 2017, and observing the very first mongolian deliberative poll about a mongolian constitutional amendment because for bizarre reasons mongolian michael you has a law that says parliament is not allowed to consider an amendment to the constitution until they run whats called a deliberative poll. Of thats a random representative selection of the population, so there were 700 mongolians in the mongolian parliament, but a perfect representative picture of mongolia so just the right number of people from the city, right number from the rural areas, have those people had been on buses for two days. Of them men, half women, rich, poor, professional like they figured the demographics and basically had a summons that says you have to show up to jury duty and participate in this process. I went to it as a constitutional law professor with all sorts of arrogance about how they will never figure these issues out its two, dated. It takes real training from real professors to understand these issues and i was blown away listening to the conversation through a translator over the course of the three days as these people grappled and understood and came to an extremely sophisticated view about this question and that made me takes seriously something that id read about and seen in a lot of different context but i really began to believe at that moment about how we begin to construct visions of ourselves or institutions that represent us back can begin to speak in a way that we would respect like a kind of we that we would be proud of and its kind of modeled on a jury in a sense that its a small set of us, but its better than a jury because its a representative of us like random representative selection drafted to come together and deliberate after being given information and going through a process to understand the issue in progress on it, so what i argue in this book, two of my earlier books have had whole chapters arguing in favor of Article Five Conventions, but what i argue in this book is i still believe in an Article Five Convention. On getting in trouble from my liberal friends were doing that, but thats my view and im going to stick to it, but i think at the least all of us should agree that we should create a shadow process to an Article Five Convention lets say we had a law that said if 20 states call for Article Five Convention on any subject balanced budget, term limits, campaign finance, whatever and congress will convene lets say five deliberative polls on that issue , by the polls where you select 500 americans randomly representative, bring them together, give them issues on both sides. We could probably hold it here and what a better place to hold it . Thats why am pitching it to you with your congregation. We will do it tomorrow. So you give them both sides of the issue, pulled their views at the beginning any and and what you see from that is what americans reflected in the best moments think about on this particular issue. Ucs in some sense at our best and we think about it like that the republican traditions says citizens are public office, but we are the only public officers who get to be quizzed like the president of the United States for this president , the president was not someone who blathered. The president was someone you asked the president a question and they answered on the basis of information given so far to just him thats based on lots of really smart insight by everyone and hes reflecting on and come rebuke. If you walked up to elena kagan on the streets of washington and asked her question about law she would be within her rights to say i dont answer quiz questions. If you have a question, get a case, get some briefs, give us a chance to have a moral argument then we will reflect on it and give you our view or even a jury. If you have a jury listening to acacia can just walk into the jury room midway through and take a poll say what you think, guilty or not, the jury is a process for coming to a view and its only at the end of the process they get to speak. But, we the people get quizzed you know youre making dinner, the telephone rings and you picked up and someone says what you think of it now or should we have reactors and you dont know anything about those questions. You dont have a chance to reflect. You know you are asked for your viewing this represented in the myths like look stupid people are. What do you expect . Even in elena kagan would be stupid if she did get a chance to read her briefs or have a sense to reflect the think about it so part of this is just why do we accept the indicative knee of we the people being represented in the most stupid and ridiculous way possible consistently and repeatedly . Why dont we insist on a process that allows us to be the best we can because im convinced. Many people look at the problem of democracy and say lets get rid of democracy or lets create elites that get to rule. Im against that. I deeply believe in democracy, but a democracy where that people have a chance to know something and reflect on it and give their view in a balanced way and we could build that if we just committed to building that. You are so profoundly right that none of us can have a informed opinion even about topics we are supposed to know something about them as weve heard the best arguments on both sides and one of the greatest privileges i have in this job is hosting the we the people podcast where i call out the top liberal and conservative scholars that constitutional issue of the week and i cannot have an informed opinion about any of these issues from the president s decision to rescind the dreamers act constitutional to can the president build a law until of heard the arguments on both sides and this is my job to know about these questions. How can we expect the citizens to have a informed decision and thats why im excited work with you and you and your cspan viewers if you want to support the idea. [inaudible] i want to ask you one last question the ring and our friends. If you could have an Article Five Convention, what reforms would you propose to it . You and the book by endorsing the bill representative the institute is arguing for public funding for congressional elections, automatic voting registration, gerrymandering reform, those are unlikely to pass congress. Would you put those reforms to an Article Five Convention and why do you still believe in Article Five Convention is advisable . Well, im someone that believes we have to amend our constitution and realistic enough to know our congress is not going to propose those amendments, i mean, also there are people on my side trying to get people to signup for petitions to get congress to propose an amendment to over certain overturn Citizens United and theres precisely zero them ideal that the u. S. Senate is going to buy a two thirds majority propose an amendment to [inaudible] i mean, maybe they should theyve they shouldnt. Its just not going to happen, so the framers actually gave us a way around congress to death Article Five Convention. When the amendment provision was proposed originally didnt include anything other than congress proposing the amendment and george mason stood up and said wait a minute what if congress is the problem and it was of course, we need a way to amend the constitution if congress is a problem and thats who the problem is. Its congress. We have a field branch in our cup government, i mean, the president is the president and the courts are extraordinary compared to what the framers thought. Of the branch that has failed his congress so we have to find a way to fix congress and the only way they have given us Article Five Convention and we should try to use it. My amendments its just a simple principle and doesnt have to be terribly long but its a principal that in some sense was already there but obviously needs surfaced, at principle of political equality. Racially quality was an important part of the 13th, 14th, 15th amendment and took us 100 years to deliver on that sex equality through the 19th amendment and maybe the 28th amendment to the important fight, those are all important qualities, income equality is a hugely important, but we at least ought to agree on this first, political equality so my amendments would be what the constitution doesnt do give everyone a right to vote which is not actually guaranteed and it would compel institutions to establish this principle of political equality which would write against gerrymandering, direct that we have congressman who can be elected without being dependent on this fraction of funders. It would empower congress to make sure states dont ring the system against the parties out of power but it would be an organizing principle for this ideal that ought to have some sense be something we can all agree on my coolie would stand up and say no i deserve more power than you do. I think in some sense we all should be able to agree that all of us as citizens equally should have the same political power inside a Representative Democracy new line thank you for this inspiring call to constitutional reform. [applause]. You are the leader of the leading organization arguing for term limits reform arguing on important case before the Supreme Court and you are in favor of an Article Five Convention to achieve term limits. Tell us why and how you would ensure the convention would focus on term limits and not on other issues you may not favor spirit that we did in our strategy to get term limits is we had a strategy in which voters could vote for a term limit amendment to their own state constitution here we caught 23 states to do its, tough campaign in the us Supreme Court case, our case we lost that case fivefour in the us Supreme Court in 1995. Our new strategy is utilizing article five, the second method per convention and term limits in my view really, it would be helpful in terms of the democratic process we have term limits we have term limits 15 state legislators and what we have seen this more women, competitive elections, money is more equalized. This is stuff, larry, you are interested in a call machine. Congress is its unbelievable. Congress, there was a study on how many competitive elections were there in 2016. There were 435 house seats, 23 were competitive. Of that means six seats were competitive, the incumbent wins all the rest of them. 2018, we had a wave election, 82 seats were considered competitive, 20 . What about the others . And 40 districts knowing challenges the incumbent, so what you get is a Political Class in the seniority system, so we are utilizing this article five, the second method george masons suggested and the main reason that i favor term limits in the term limit i favor is a real term limit, three house terms, six years and two senate terms. Its what we call adverse preselection. There are a lot of people in this room who i think would qualify for congress and if you think about it he say someone asked me too run for congress, great. Let me take a look at it appeared the reelection rates in the us house of representatives is 95 , so if you are foolish enough to run for congress against an incumbent, not much of a chance, but this particular district we had a chance because the incumbent was indicted or its an open seat. He left, retired for whatever reason. Great. I think i will run, but you think about it some more. Lets us suppose im a doctor, running count, engineer, business person, educator. If i win i run, when, go through the scrutiny and i win and now i have a chance to getting congress. Out of that work . Well theres a seniority system, topdown system. I am a successful i dont know engineer or water whatever. On going to be subservience to seniority. The average Committee Chair has been in congress for 23 years, so im going to run, im not saying me, but a successful person in my plans to run through why would i run . Im going to be subservience and it will take me a decade, two decades to get anything accomplished . Why would i do that . We call this adverse preselection because the best people on average dont run, but then this is idea on term limits on congress and if you had three house terms seniority system is out the window and its now based on merits. You can attract more people. You will have more competitive elections. Money will be equalized. Money works like this, larry, you understand this. Its Something Like incumbent races and spends a million and a half, challenger 250,000, so its a six to one advantage to the incumbent and of course the incumbent has all the name id to start with. Spectral interest pacs, 9 to 1 dollar so with a rig system, but an open seat where you dont have disparity between a challenger and incumbents the averages 600,000, so what term limits does, real term limits equalize as the system and article five approach, to me, and i agree with larry is the only way to do it. You will get two thirds of both house of congress two term limit themselves without enormous pressure . Give me a break. Thank you very much for that. [applause]. C mcdaniels, you have written this runaway success article in terms of attention its been getting. How to save the Supreme Court, all of you should read the original. There are two big proposals that you make and i will just summarize them quickly because i wanted to ask you about the convention route. First there is a Supreme Court lottery under this reform every judge on the federal court of appeals would be appointed as a associate justice of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court word here cases of a panel of nine randomly selected and then you say bylaw h panel panel would be prohibitive from having more than five justices nominated by a single Political Party no more than five republicans or democrats out of time and the second is the balanced bench and this is the proposal that Pete Buttigieg has endorsed and you would start with 10 justices fully affiliated with the Democratic Party and pie with the republican party. 10 person affiliated justices would have to select an additional five judges unanimously two years in advance for a oneyear term. Powerful, creative and not easy to get through congress, obviously to put it mildly, so is it fair to say that Convention May be the sure store most possible way of achieving these are forms and what do you think of the idea of an Article Five Convention to achieve the reforms you advocate . With respect to these reforms in particular i think the clear what we were trying to do is get out in front of a debate currently happening on the left, which is lets if we ever get both houses of congress back, get rid of the filibuster and pack the courts and that seemed unthinkable a few years ago it seems in the realm of possibility today. Now, its a big if if the democrats are ever in a position to retake the senate in the immediate future, but theres a lot of anger about the way the Supreme Court has been turned into a political football and how the court is really being treated as a partisan institution away i think was less True Generation ago and i think for many of the reason that actually larry talked about in his book, which is the increasing polarization of society. We see that affect with two universes of law peer we have basically republican version of law and a democratic version of law and people just dont increase on the basic bundle precepts we came up with these proposals because we think if you could get them through congress they are plausible if i think if we were going to go to a article by the amendment process, for the court im not sure these are necessarily the only proposals we should think about. Theres a lot we need to think about and i would love to hear what larry thinks about this because i think the courts there is a lot of potential problems to talk about and one thing thats interesting is the way in which the accord is may reinforcing sort of being a force multiplier for some problems that larry is drawing our attention towards i mean the Court Strikes down the Voting Rights act. The court couldve ended person gerrymandering last year and it chose not and there are ways in the in which the court is making some of these problems first. I think we need to have a conversation about why do we have a Supreme Court. I dont see a good justification for the way the court is currently structured. We basically have nine people and they get to decide about your really important stuff and to those nine people are is a little bit dependent on a chance because it depends on when they decide to die or retire and i dont think that is the same way to run a country. I think we need a conversation and i think this would be as good of a place to start as any about what the Supreme Court should look like, who should be on and what relationship should membership have to democratic politics. If you fix that a lot of these are problems, i mean, we talked away the we talked about the way the court plays a big role. Gerrymandering, i mean, the court could have stopped gerrymandering and easy to imagine an alternate universe in which the court did if Merrick Garland had become a Supreme Court justice. The same polarization that has infected the country may you argue the afflicting Supreme Court and in addition to the particular proposals you make if there were convention you would want them to think more broadly about representation on the court and when i am herein, friends, is powerful concern our current institution of congress, the courts and the presidency as well as the media are not representing the considered and thoughtful and deliberate will of we the people and that was really what the framers hoped would be reflected in the constitutional amendment process and filter through Representative Democracy and what i want your questions are phenomenal as always and there are so many i think i will put a bunch of them on the table first four professor Lawrence Lessig and then direct sum to our other panelists, but with the framework in mind because our audience is curious about how to make our institutions more representative in the sense you described. Let me just share with you a few of these. How can our system of government sorry, forgive me. Has our system of government ever been representative of speaking of Representative Democracy why with many small states vote to amend the constitution to reduce their influence . How do you keep a deliberative poll body from being infected of all the palms of congress which was supposed be representative and a deliberative including money partisanship, presuppositions etc. And finally what would you advise a fledging democracy crating a constitution to do to ensure the representativeness you hope for. Obviously we have never had a Representative Democracy in the way that we think it should be representative. The framers gave us a system where basically white man, Property Holders were the people fled the Political Rights and the men jackson stamped down the property owning part in the 15th amendment was supposed to enable africanamerican men to participate in the 19th amendment made it so women could participate, so weve had an increasingly robust population who should be representative. So, i dont to a golden path past and say lets go back there. I look to a golden ideal that i think is at the core of our constitution and say lets get there. Lets finally get their peer lets try a Representative Democracy for 10 years and see if we can just have it what would come from and if we could achieve the ideal through the principle of representative equality, i think many of the problems that we think confront our congress right now would be easier to address, so its not that the past is the example. Its ideals from the past that i think we should push forward on. As to the small states you gave me a list of questioning and i am imagining i could remember them all, but the small states, look, and the Torah College right now is often defended as an institution that benefits a small states. Thats just not true. The swing states are not the small states. Pennsylvania is a swing state, michigan is a swing state, florida is a swing state and they are not small states. It happens that the population of iowa and the population of new hampshire, to swing states are small but thats accidental, its just because of the purple miss of states that they are important, so one of the most important cases to go to the Supreme Court to challenge the system that produces the swing state america was actually brought by delaware. Delaware in 1968 by case to get the Supreme Court to end it when the winner take all because they thought it was benefiting on everyone equally benefiting certain states powerful. I think i actually think theres an amendment that everyone should be okay with, no partisan disagreement about this or it should at least be a compromise we should grant which is basically to say take the number of electors we have right now, so you give a certain advantage to small states, but instead of winner take all allocate the electors proportionally at a fractional level so does it matter if you get a vote in wyoming, its worth as much to you as a vote in california or. If you did that the whole country would be in play, every president would want a boat from everywhere so we would have a president who represented everyone and i think people when they recognize the problem with the college is that it doesnt represent america would see this as an alternative that could better represent america. And of the other question, how would you prevent the citizen juries from being infected by the same partition chip as congress claimant i think you know the pathology of our congress is a driven in a huge way by the dependence may have on raising money. Is because they have to spend 30 to 70 of their time raising money that they begin to be bent in a way that makes it hard for them to do the work of working together in a cover semi just think about yourself. If you spent 30 to 70 of your time raising money under fundraising staff told you the easiest way to convince someone to get money is to vilify that other side, we dont throw out those republicans, we dont get those democrats out of loftus, you will never get what we need. The whole method of fundraising by vilification is the number one most effective way to raise money. The point is, if you do that for three or four hours every single day, how do you turn around and put your arm around someone and say lets out a deal like you just let your time trashing the person in your little covey with headphones on call and people across country and then you will walk on the floor of congress as a joke, wonderful to see you, lets figure out how we can work on things together. I think we can remove that pathological process from the court deliberation like the framers never imagined that the member of congress would sit there on the telephone obviously calling people to raise money. It was not in anything they were thinking about and the point about the deliberate hole when you summon everyone and you dropped everyone in compensated them enough that they are not troubled them losing their job or whatever and you put them in a room and say your job is to figure out whats in the right to just at the American Work it out and the reality is that the extremists will turn out to be 5 on each side or maybe 10 on each side and most people, will be those extremists and they wont be worrying about raising money peer who they dont have to raise money or make anyone happy or worry that if they do that they wont get reelected or they wont get they will be punished in a certain way. Its for that reason i dont think we should turn government over two bodies like this. I think accountability is important and thats why i agree the concerns to make sure terms can change is important so we have accountability, but i think there is a way to structure this so the same pathology that exists in our congress would not exist in a body like this. Thank you. Holly, what would James Madison think about term limits clinic i think he would be in favor. Jefferson called term limits said mandatory mandatory rotation in office and heres a tidbit i learned today. Ive been involved in term limits all the shares. What i learned that today is franklin right here in pennsylvania in the first pennsylvania constitution inserted a fouryear term limit on the pennsylvania legislature. And there have been five constitutions altogether. They managed to get it out, but Brent Franklin made the term limits. Amazing. Danna, its been a wideranging discussion and its taken us beyond your particular proposals but wearing your constitutional observer hat, you said if we had a Article Five Convention you would want to consider other proposals to reduce polarization and rethink the way we select Supreme Court justices. What might some of those the end do you think they might pass . There are two questions, i mean, one is who should be on the Supreme Court and the other is what should the Supreme Court be doing and how much power should the Supreme Court have and should the Supreme Court be kind of exercising sort of a general veto over all sorts of legislation, which they do because it turns out and justices on both sides are responsible for this, you can make a puzzle constitutional argument that almost any form of legislation by late something in the constitution. It doesnt have to be written down. Shall be county Voting Rights act section four was unconstitutional because of the principle of equal sovereignty which is it written down in the constitution, but you get smart folks together and they come up with good arguments. I think we need to have a very serious conversation about whether we actually want a group of unelected people to have that kind of power and whether there are any kind of constraints we can put in the power, i mean, right now i think a big problem is a huge amount of our debate about the membership thats really a proxy battle about abortion because we know that it matters a lot. Other issues, also. We have to figure out is that the right institution to solve those problems. Im not sure. Thinks us so much for that. I think, in fact, larry, this is your book in the beginning of what i know will be a galvanizing tour so you shut the last word. Why dont you send our audience out into the fall evening with whatever words you want to give them about why its urgently important reform america so we have a more Representative Democracy. Striking thing i was excited about to be on this panel is theres obviously, i mean, we are all white men but theres another diversity that is on this panel of political diversity. I think what you can hear out of this conversation is that though we have differences on substance i think we have come to a place where we see we need to have a serious conversation about democratic reform. I would love to see Article Five Convention that talks about term limits. I would like to see that as part of a conversation about representational integrity. Part of what you are saying is we dont have a system for representing which is actually has an integrity with our populace because the insiders protect themselves from that and i certainly agree that we need to think about structure of the Supreme Court. There are so many other constitutional courts around the world that have begun to do it better than us and for simple reasons. We can imagine fixing our courts in that way. I think the most important lesson that comes from this is to resist a kind of elite is a about the constitution and by that, i mean, so i wont name names, but may be able to figure this out. I was having a conversation with a senior liberal leader who is opposed to Article Five Convention and i was pitching him about why some of his arguments were completely bogus. Anyway, this was a good thing we should have and he said okay, you kind of convinced me that this conversation happened in october, 2016, he said why should we risk it . We will have an election. Hillary clinton will be elected and take three Supreme Court justices and we will get what we want to a reinterpretation by the Supreme Court and i was like a punch in the gut because i thought this is what constitutionalism has begun. Its about the people. Its like we should not involve the people, keep the people far from the constitution because we cant trust you guys. Like we have tabbed the lawyers, the elites figuring out what the constitution should mean and if there is problem we will just get another set of justices on the court to fix it for us. Thats the death of democracy. When we no longer feel entitled and empowered and capable of even understanding our constitution and doing something with it, then we dont deserve a constitution, so you obviously this congregation lives in the celebration of the idea that people can understand and celebrate and heaps teach the constitution and i am a great admirer of my friend justin what you are doing. Thank you for that, but youre not america [inaudible] happy to say that, but what im saying is that most america does not feel entitled or empowered or even asked to understand the constitution and until we can change that, which really is about changing the attitude of a bunch of elite people who think they should be close to control in the constitution and keep it far from you, we wont have any hope of fixing the core problems at the core of our democracy. Booktv continues now on