The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the national frame of government. Its first three articles embody the doctrine of the separation of powers, whereby the federal government is divided into three branches: the legislative, consisting of the bicameral Congress ; the executive, consisting of the president and subordinate officers ; and the judicial, consisting of the Supreme Court and other federal courts. Article IV, Article V, and Article VI embody concepts of federalism, describing the rights and responsibilities of state governments, the states in relationship to the federal government, and the shared process of constitutional amendment. Article VII establishes the procedure subsequently used by the 13 states to ratify it. It is regarded as the oldest written and codified national constitution in force.
Article Five of the United States Constitution describes the process for altering the Constitution. Under Article Five, the process to alter the Constitution consists of proposing an amendment or amendments, and subsequent ratification.
Campaign finance laws in the United States have been a contentious political issue since the early days of the union. The most recent major federal law affecting campaign finance was the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002, also known as "McCain-Feingold". Key provisions of the law prohibited unregulated contributions to national political parties and limited the use of corporate and union money to fund ads discussing political issues within 60 days of a general election or 30 days of a primary election; However, provisions of BCRA limiting corporate and union expenditures for issue advertising were overturned by the Supreme Court in Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life.
Lester Lawrence Lessig III is an American academic, attorney, and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Lessig was a candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for president of the United States in the 2016 U.S. presidential election but withdrew before the primaries.
Randy Evan Barnett is an American legal scholar and lawyer. He serves as the Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University, where he teaches constitutional law and contracts, and is the director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. After graduating from Northwestern University and Harvard Law School, he tried many felony cases as a prosecutor in the Cook County States’ Attorney's Office in Chicago. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies and the Bradley Prize, Barnett has been a visiting professor at Penn, Northwestern and Harvard Law School.
The Corwin Amendment was a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that was never adopted. It would shield "domestic institutions" of the states from the federal constitutional amendment process and from abolition or interference by Congress. Although the Corwin Amendment does not explicitly use the word slavery, it was designed specifically to protect slavery from federal power. Congress proposed the Corwin Amendment on March 2, 1861, shortly before the outbreak of the American Civil War, with the intent of preventing civil war, and preserving the Union. It passed Congress but was not ratified by the requisite number of states.
A balanced budget amendment is a constitutional rule requiring that a state cannot spend more than its income. It requires a balance between the projected receipts and expenditures of the government.
A convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution, also referred to as an Article V Convention or amendatory convention; is one of two methods authorized by Article Five of the United States Constitution whereby amendments to the United States Constitution may be proposed: two thirds of the State legislatures may call a convention to propose amendments, which become law only after ratification by three-fourths of the states. The Article V convention method has never been used; but 33 amendments have been proposed by the other method, a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress; and 27 of these have been ratified by three-fourths of the States. Although there has never been a federal constitutional convention since the original one, at the state level more than 230 constitutional conventions have assembled in the United States.
A More Perfect Constitution is a book published by American political scientist at the University of Virginia, Larry J. Sabato, in which he proposes a constitutional convention to substantially overhaul the United States Constitution. He points out that after the Bill of Rights, there have only been seventeen constitutional amendments over the past 220 years. He argues that a constitutional convention is overdue and is something that the Founding Fathers would have wanted. He offers 23 proposals for revising the Constitution.
Electoral reform in the United States refers to efforts to change American elections and the electoral system used in the United States.
Change Congress was a project aiming to end corruption in the United States Congress by reducing what it considered the distorted influence of money in that legislative body. Founded in 2008 by Lawrence Lessig and Joe Trippi, Change Congress aimed to organize citizens to push candidates to make commitments on the following issues: take no money from lobbyists or PACs, vote to end earmarks, support publicly financed campaigns, and support reform to increase congressional transparency.
Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It is the sixth book by Harvard law professor and free culture activist Lawrence Lessig. In a departure from the topics of his previous books, Republic, Lost outlines what Lessig considers to be the systemic corrupting influence of special-interest money on American politics, and only mentions copyright and other free culture topics briefly, as examples. He argued that the Congress in 2011 spent the first quarter debating debit-card fees while ignoring what he sees as more pressing issues, including health care reform or global warming or the deficit. Lessig has been described in The New York Times as an "original and dynamic legal scholar."
The 99 Percent Declaration or 99% Declaration is a not-for-profit organization based in Kentucky that originated from a working group of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement in Zuccotti Park, New York City, in October 2011. The organization published a document calling for a "National General Assembly" to be held beginning the week of July 4, 2012 in Philadelphia, which was rejected by the general assemblies of OWS and Occupy Philadelphia. The Declaration includes demands for an immediate ban on all monetary and gift contributions to all politicians, implementation of a public financing system for political campaigns, and the enactment of an amendment to the United States Constitution overturning the Supreme Court's Citizens United v. FEC decision.
The calling of a Second Constitutional Convention of the United States is a proposal made by some academics and activists from across the political spectrum for the purpose of making substantive reforms to the federal government of the United States by rewriting the U.S. Constitution.
One Way Forward: The Outsider's Guide to Fixing the Republic is the seventh book by Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor and activist concerned about the excessive influence of corporate money in politics. One Way Forward describes his discussions with activists in the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. He says the two groups have a lot in common, including a concern for the future of the US and a willingness to devote substantial amounts of time and possibly money to do what they think is likely to fix the worst of the problems.
Wolf-PAC is an American nonpartisan political action committee formed in 2011 with the goal of adding an "amendment to the United States Constitution to ensure balance, integrity, and transparency to our national system of campaign finance".
Mayday PAC is an American crowd-funded non-partisan Super PAC created by Harvard Law School professor and activist Lawrence Lessig. Its purpose is to help elect candidates to the Congress to pass campaign finance reform. It is notable for raising large sums from numerous contributors in a short span of time – nearly $11 million in 2014 – and was described in the Los Angeles Times as the "super PAC to end all super PACs." The group spent over $10 million in the November 2014 elections, but its strategic plan of electing candidates friendly to campaign finance reform failed.
The 2016 presidential campaign of Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Harvard University and cofounder of Creative Commons, was formally announced on September 6, 2015, as Lessig confirmed his intentions to run for the Democratic Party's nomination for President of the United States in 2016. Lessig had promised to run if his exploratory committee raised $1 million by Labor Day, which it accomplished one day early. He described his candidacy as a referendum on campaign finance reform and electoral reform legislation.
The Citizen Equality Act of 2017 is a draft piece of legislation proposed by former 2016 American presidential candidate Lawrence Lessig. The act was the centerpiece of Lessig's campaign platform, encompassing his plans for campaign finance reform, expansion of voting access, and revised districting laws. Lessig had stated that if elected, he would make these reforms the first priority of his presidency. At the start of his campaign, he announced his candidacy as a "referendum," stating that he would step down upon the enactment of the Citizen Equality Act and turn the presidency over to the vice president. In an October 2015 interview on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, he retracted this statement and expressed his intention to stay on as president if elected. On November 2, 2015, Lessig ended his bid for the presidency, citing changes in Democratic Party rules that excluded him from the stage during televised debates.
A campaign finance reform amendment refers to any proposed amendment to the United States Constitution to authorize greater restrictions on spending related to political speech, and to overturn Supreme Court rulings which have narrowed such laws under the First Amendment. Several amendments have been filed since Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and the Occupy movement.
