Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig, known as Larry, is an American legal scholar and political activist, born in Rapid City, South Dakota, in 1961. He studied economics and management at the University of Pennsylvania, philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge, and law at the University of Chicago and Yale, then clerked for Judge Richard Posner and Justice Antonin Scalia. He taught at the University of Chicago, Harvard and Stanford, where he founded the Center for Internet and Society, and returned to Harvard in 2009 as the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership. He founded Creative Commons in 2001 and Equal Citizens, argues for reduced legal restrictions on copyright, and has campaigned for campaign finance and electoral reform, including a brief bid for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.