Whereas in the past, it was a gross injustice that certain segments of our society weren’t represented, we had a functioning government. Because the most important of these failures is the way campaigns are funded, which has produced a Congress that is incapable of actually achieving anything. I do have a sense that the consequence of the unrepresentativeness is much greater today.
I don’t think there was any “golden age.” At any time we could have written a book about how institutions have produced unrepresentativeness. “The failure of our government to function is the existential problem we face right now.” And then finally with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, it was actually all people, regardless of race. Originally, it’s white male property owners and then it’s white males and then it’s white males and black males and then it was women. Lawrence Lessig: Obviously the relevant body of citizens the system was worried about representing equally has changed dramatically over time. Was there ever a time of total “representation?” And what is different about our current moment? Hope Reese: American government has not always been representative––for instance, there were centuries where women and African Americans couldn’t vote. Here is our conversation, edited for length and clarity. I spoke to Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School, about the role of education in democracy and about why campaign funding is a critical obstacle to democracy, among other subjects. In his book, Lessig proposes some solutions to these problems, including penalties on states that suppress voters, incentives to end gerrymandering, and “civic juries,” which would be a system to have representative bodies make decisions on behalf of constituents. In 2016, he took matters into his own hands, running for president on a platform of campaign finance reform. Lessig has been an outspoken critic of the Electoral College, campaign financing, and gerrymandering, and is a frequent commentator on these issues. “They,” Lessig tells me, refers both to our elected representatives, as well as the “voice” that they are representing. That’s what’s happening now, argues law professor Lawrence Lessig in his latest book, They Don’t Represent Us: Reclaiming Our Democracy. When Americans are not equally represented in our government, our democracy is endangered.
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