Politics

Expert talks Scalia at Nassau Community College

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Lawrence Lessig, the Harvard Law professor who briefly campaigned for the presidency in 2015, spoke to more than 150 people at Nassau Community College on April 27, speaking publicly for the first time about his relationship with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and calling for action against what he said is the country’s foremost problem: money in politics.

The issue was central to Lessig’s campaign before he suspended it after he was denied the opportunity to participate in the first Democratic debate. The Democratic National Committee required that he gain 1 percent of voters’ support in three polls within six weeks of the debate. Polls weren’t including his name, so his campaign had to “fight” to have it included. Once that happened and he achieved the necessary support, Lessig claimed the DNC called his campaign and said that 1 percent was required in three polls six weeks before the debate, and that he was too late. “They changed the rules at the last minute,” he said.

He compared his experience to that of 2012 Republican primary candidate Buddy Roemer, who claimed he was excluded from debates because the bar for participation was raised each time he met it. His platform was also centered on campaign finance reform.

Lessig cited the difficulty in participating in elections as an indicator of a system rigged in favor of the rich and the representatives they support. That favor comes at a price, he argued, and the result is a system where representatives are responsive to the wishes of their funders over their constituents. “This is an inequality that has destroyed our representative democracy,” he said.

Lessig, who clerked for Scalia in 1990 and 1991 and maintained a friendship with him until Scalia’s death in February, said that his former boss helped make the problem worse with Scalia’s opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission in 2010. “Scalia didn’t do this, but he did make it worse,” Lessig said.

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