Equal Citizens

And over the last 20 years, he has focused on institutional corruption, relationships which, while legal, weaken public trust in an institution, especially as that affects democracy.

He's also the founder of Equal Citizens, an organization whose mission is to fix democracy by establishing truly equal citizenship.

Welcome, Larry.

Thank you for joining us.

The Brennan Center, two weeks before the oral arguments, released a study where on like six different dimensions, more than 90% of Americans would say that ours is a corrupted political system.

You know, and what Neil said at the end of his argument was really brilliant, kind of remixing Hillel a bit, where he said, if not now, when? If not on this record, then what would the record have to be for us to recognize that the appearance of corruption is prevalent and we ought to give the states the freedom to do something about it? So on the appearance of corruption standard, we ought to win.

And then the third reason, which is really the only reason why we had the opportunity to be in the case, obviously Maine is defending their initiative, but my group, Equal Citizens, along with the ballot question committee and a really great state senator, Rick Bennett, who was a Republican state senator, now is an independent running for governor in Maine, we intervened.

And we intervened because we wanted to make an argument which the state of Maine didn't want to make.

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My guest today is Larry Lessig, Harvard law professor and founder of Equal Citizens, a nonprofit dedicated to democracy and campaign finance reform.

Everyone blames Citizens United for super PACs.

Lessig says that's wrong.

And in July of twenty twenty-five, the district court agreed with them that it violated the First Amendment, even though the district court said there's a risk of corruption from these contributions, it still nonetheless held that the First Amendment protected billionaires' rights to spend unlimited amounts of money to support or oppose political candidates.

And that then led to this appeal, which has taken a year to get to the Court of Appeals.

On July twenty-ninth, the Court of Appeals heard arguments, and we, my group, Equal Citizens, had intervened in the case because we really thought there are two kinds of arguments here.

One argument is the argument about this quid pro quo point that I've just made.