Ladies and gentlemen, remember when you wake and sleep at the National ConstitutionCenter 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