Born on June 3, 1961, in Rapid City, South Dakota, Lawrence Lessig is a prominent constitutional scholar on Internet law and a political activist. Lawrence Lessig obtained a B.A. in Economics and a B.S. in Management from the University of Pennsylvania; earned his Masters in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge and a J.D. from Yale Law School. He is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, which supports scholarly research on Internet law, particularly regarding copyright and trademark issues. Before Lawrence Lessig joined Stanford, he was the Berkman Professor of Law at the Harvard Law School and also taught at the University of Chicago.

Lawrence Lessig initially focused on constitutional law and then shifted his focus on the law of cyberspace, making him an important figure in cyberlaw in the United States and internationally. Lawrence Lessig supports free software and open spectrum and he is also known to disapprove of copyright term extensions and restrictions on copyright, trademark, and radio frequency spectrum. He founded Creative Commons (CC), a non-profit organization that is committed to increase the scope of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. Creative Commons releases licenses that enable copyright holders to grant some or all of their rights to the public while preserving others by way of licensing and contract schemes. The organization’s concept is associated with the “free culture movement,” which is a social movement that is geared towards upholding the freedom to distribute and revise creative works through the Internet and other media; thus opposing to copyright laws that are excessively restrictive thereby limiting the creativity of other people. Lawrence Lessig has written a number of books including The Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, The Future of Ideas, and Free Culture. Due to Lawrence Lessig’s efforts, he was awarded the FSF Award by the Freedom Software Foundation. Additionally, Scientific American recognized him as one of the “Top 50 Visionaries” and Law.com has also recognized him as one of “The 100 Most Influential Lawyers” in 2008.
At a summit in 2007, Lawrence Lessig announced that he would redirect his focus on works fighting against political corruption. Lawrence Lessig co-founded “Change Congress,” a web-based project that was launched in March 2008 that is aimed at putting a stop to corruption in the United States Congress.