Lessig | Blog, news, books

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Web Name: Lessig | Blog, news, books

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Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School.Prior to rejoining the Harvard faculty, Lessig was a professor at Stanford Law School, where he founded the school’s Center for Internet and Society, and at the University of Chicago.He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court. Lessig serves on the Board of the AXA Research Fund, and on the advisory boards of Creative Commons and the Sunlight Foundation.He is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Association, and has received numerous awards, including the Free Software Foundation s Freedom Award, Fastcase 50 Award and being named one of Scientific American s Top 50 Visionaries.Lessig holds a BA in economics and a BS in management from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in philosophy from Cambridge, and a JD from Yale.Click here to download (PDF, 340 KB).1.0,1.1,2.0,2.1,3.0,3.1Following the good practice of some, I offer the following disclosure statement.How I make moneyI am a law professor. I am paid to teach and write in fields that interest me. Never is my academic research directed by anyone other than I. I am not required to teach any particular course; I am never required or even asked by anyone with authority over me to write about a particular subject or question. I am in this important sense a free laborer.I also get paid for some of my writing. I write books that are sold commercially. Every book contract I have includes a clause that requires that the book be licensed under a Creative Commons license at some point. I have been commissioned to write articles for magazines. But in all cases, while I may contract about the subject matter I will address, I never contract about the substance.I have (though rarely) been paid to consult on matters related to my work. If I have, my behavior conforms to the NC Principle articulated below.I give many public lectures (e.g., 72 in 2012), and I am sometimes paid to deliver those lectures. If I am paid, I will contract as to subject matter (e.g., whether the speech is about innovation, or corruption, or privacy, etc.). I will never contract as to substance. In addition to an honorarium, I also accept payment to cover travel expenses.I am not compensated for my work with nonprofits.Business AttachmentsI have no regular clients. I have served on many non-profit boards (see my CV for the full list) but am currently on the board of the AXA Research fund only, and the advisory boards of Creative Commons and the Sunlight foundation.I serve on no commercial boards. I don t take stock-options to serve on boards or advisory boards. In 2010, I became a mentor, along with others, to Neoteny Labs, an early-stage technology incubator founded by my friend Joichi Ito. My role in that capacity is to offer advice and support to this research lab.The Non-Corruption (NC) PrincipleIt is a special privilege that I have a job that permits me to say just what I believe, and not what I m paid to say. That freedom used to be the norm among professionals. It is less and less the norm today. Lawyers at one time had a professional ethic that permitted them to say what they believe. Now the concept of business conflicts meaning, a conflict with the commercial interests of actual or potential clients silences many from saying what they believe. Doctors too are hired into jobs where they are not allowed to discuss certain medical procedures (See, e.g., Rust v. Sullivan). Researchers at think tanks learn who the funders are as a first step to deciding what questions will be pursued. And finally, and most obviously, the same is true of politicians: The constant need to raise money just to keep their job drives them to develop a sixth sense about what sorts of statements (whether true or not) will cost them fundraising dollars.With perhaps one exception (politicians), no one forces professionals into this compromise. (The exception is because I don t see how you survive in politics, as the system is, without this compromise, unless you are insanely rich.) We ourselves choose the values we live by. And as the freedom I have to say what I believe is to me the most important part of my job, I have chosen a set of principles that limit any link between money and the views I express.I call these principles non-corruption principles because I believe that behavior inconsistent with these principles, at least among professionals, is a kind of corruption. Obviously, I don t mean corruption in the crudest sense. Everyone would agree that it is wrong for a climate change scientist to say to Exxon, if you pay me $50,000, I ll write an article criticizing global warming science. That is not the sort of corruption I am talking about.I mean instead corruption in a more subtle sense. We all understand that subtle sense when we look at politicians. We don t recognize it enough when we think about lawyers, doctors, scientists, and professors.I want to increase this recognition, even at the risk of indirectly calling some of my friends corrupt. Norms are uncertain here. I hope they change. But until they change, we should not condemn those with differing views. We should engage them. I intend this to be the beginning of that engagement.So, the NC principle:The simple version is just this:I do not shill for anyone.The more precise version is this:I never promote as policy a position that I have been paid to advise about, consult upon, or write about.If payment is made to an institution in a way that might fairly and reasonably be said to benefit me indirectly, then I will either follow the same rule, or disclose the payment.The precise version need to be precisely specified, but much can be understood from its motivation: Corruption in my view is the subtle pressure to take views or positions because of the financial reward they will bring you. Subtle in the sense that one s often not even aware of the influence. (This is true, I think, of most politicians.) The rule is thus designed to avoid even that subtle force.So: I never promote as policy a position : This is meant to distinguish work as a lawyer from work as an advocate. I don t typically do legal work for money. But everyone should understand that when a lawyer speaks for his client, he speaks for his client. The corruption I am targeting is a lawyer or academic speaking not for a client, but presumptively, for the truth. promote means in any public forum so an op-ed, testimony, or a lecture. that I have been paid : Paid means directly or indirectly. Directly would be direct compensation to me, or support for my research, or other funding I otherwise wouldn t have been entitled to. Indirectly means compensation to an entity that I am responsible to raise money for from an easily identified interest. This line is hard to draw in many cases, but relatively easy to draw as it applies to me: I am not hired to fundraise for my law school. Thus, if you give a substantial amount of money to Harvard, you don t, in my view, indirectly benefit me because you have not made my life any different from how it was before you gave that money. (Indeed, given the hassle that usually runs with such gifts, you ve likely made my life more difficult.) to advise about, consult upon, or write about : I mean this clause to include all the possible ways in which someone might try to make another person s life better off financially. So sometimes people are paid money to write articles; sometimes special research programs are funded; sometimes a consulting fee is paid all with the express promise that no obligation is intended. All of these count for purposes of this rule. If payment is made to an institution in a way that might fairly and reasonably be said to benefit me indirectly, then I will either follow the same rule, or disclose the payment : By this I mean to target payments not to me but that benefit me in ways I wouldn t otherwise have been benefitted. So that doesn t include, e.g., a general contribution to Harvard — since, again, I don t have obligations to raise money for Harvard, and Harvard already has a fixed contractual obligation to pay me. But it would include a payment to a non-profit for which I have an obligation to raise money. (I am currently not sitting on any board that requires me to raise funds for that organization.) The effect of this clause in these cases is to give me an option about whether indirect contributions result in silence by me or disclosure by me.But isn t disclosure always enough?Some would say this principle is too strict. That a simpler rule indeed the rule that governs in most of these contexts simply requires disclosure.I don t agree with the disclosure principle. In my view, it is too weak. The best evidence that it is too weak is the United States Congress. All know, or can know, who gives what to whom. That hasn t chilled in the least the kind of corruption that I am targeting here. More generally: if everyone plays this kind of corruption game, then disclosure has no effect in stopping the corruption I am targeting. Thus, in my view, it is not enough to say that Exxon funded this research. In my view, Exxon should not be directly funding an academic to do research benefiting Exxon in a policy dispute.(There is a difficult line here that turns upon practice. When I was at Chicago, professors received summer research grants. Those were awarded by the Dean. To make the funders happy, the professor would write this research was supported by a grant by XXX. But never was the money given in light of the work, and most of the time, it wasn t till after you had finished something that you discovered who had funded the work. I don t mean to be targeting this sort of behavior at all. Again, the funding the professor received was independent of the grant by XXX.)What the NC principle is notThe NC principle is about money. It is not about any other influence. Thus, if you re nice to me, no doubt, I ll be nice to you. If you re respectful, I ll be respectful back. If you flatter me, I doubt I could resist flattering you in return. If you push causes I believe in, I will likely push your work as well. These forms of influence are not within the scope of the NC principle not because they are not sometimes troubling, but because none of them involve money. I mean the NC principle only to be about removing the influence of money from the work of a professional. I don t think there s any need to adopt a rule to remove these other influences.Why is money different from flattery, or being a liberal? Good question. Lots of obvious reasons. (For example, think about how hard these other corruption principles would be to implement: I can t support X because he supports the Democratic party, as I do. I can t testify in favor of Y because its President said something nice about me. Talk about perverse incentives )Someday I hope time will give me the opportunity to say more about why in depth. But for now, I mean only to specify the scope of my principle: It is a principle about isolating one form of influence from the work that I (and I hope my colleagues) do. We (in legal academics, and imho) get paid enough not to have to worry about selling testimony.Thus, one friend wrote me with disappointment about something I wrote that could be viewed as a favor to someone else. So long as money is not involved, I m all for this kind of favor. We should be doing favors for people we agree with all the time. Especially people on our side of the debate: we need to become at least as good as the other side in cultivating a community of support.So what does all this promise?If you believe I am following my principle, then you can still believe I am biased because I m a liberal, or wrong because I m an idiot, or overly attentive because I m easily flattered, or under-attentive because I punish people who behave badly. All that the NC principle promises is that I am not saying what I am saying because of money.As appliedI have been living these principles for many years. So my purpose here is not to announce any new policy. You can agree or disagree with the principles. You can believe them too strict, or not strict enough. They are significantly stricter than anything within the academy just now. No doubt, many may believe they are way too strict.But whether you believe them too strict, or not strict enough, I would encourage you to engage them. Consistent with my NC principle, I will reward kindness and insight with at least kindness. I will ignore people whose argument style stopped developing in high school. But because this is an issue I very much want to continue to work on, the only thing for sure is I won t accept money to consult around it.Finally, and again, I don t offer this as a tool to condemn. I offer it because I believe this is a conversation we all should have. I am eager to see the ideas of others addressing this same topic. I d be grateful to be shown a simpler way to achieve the same objective.Please feel free to contact Professor Lessig directly. His email is below. But before you do, please read the following.If you have any questions involving his schedule, you MUST contact his assistant. Do not — regardless of who you are or how well you know Lessig — try to schedule him or direct his schedule without also contacting his assistant. His assistant controls his schedule. Lessig ONLY does what his schedule says.If you are requesting an interview, please contact his assistant.If you are a Harvard student, you should always write to Professor Lessig directly with any question you like. But again, anything affecting his schedule (recommendation letters, meetings, etc.) please also correspond with his assistant.If you are a non-Harvard student with a research question, Professor Lessig is happy to answer questions about his work. Questions of the form, I m doing research about the Internet, can you send me some information? will be answered with a link to this page.If you are a non-Harvard student with any other question or any other idea, please read the following:I apologize, but I am declaring a non-essential-email moratorium. I have three young kids, I have a demanding job, and I am trying to do as much as I possibly can to reform a corrupted political system. It has taken me too long to recognize that I can either do my jobs, or answer email, but I can t do both.So if you re writing with general questions, or with an idea about how I might do a different kind of reform, or with a request that I answer a series of questions about whatever, you ll get a reply that links you with this page.I am sorry for this, but time is too short, and there is much too much to get done. I am happy to read what you send, or at least, as much as I can. And if there s a link I think that might make sense to pursue, I will. But within this category, I am sorry, but the default is the default of a tweet: No reply should be expected.You can contact Lessig s assistant, Valentina de Portu, either by email, phone (+1.617.496.1124), or the mail address for Lessig below.You may contact Lessig by email, or by mail:Harvard Law School1563 Massachusetts AvenueCambridge, MA 02138

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