Cass Sunstein

As public trust in Facebook’s ability to wield its power responsibly has fractured in the face of a series of privacy breaches and other scandals, the company has been facing fresh calls for regulation from numerous quarters of the federal government. But on one of the biggest issues leading to that breakdown of trust, its response to foreign election interference, Facebook has made significant progress, according to Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, who made a rare public appearance at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Wednesday...In a discussion with Harvard Law School professor Cass Sunstein, Zuckerberg invited regulators to set industrywide privacy standards and take a harder line with foreign interference in elections while pushing back against calls to break up Facebook.

It can often feel hopeless to be an activist seeking social change on an obscure issue where most people seem opposed or at best indifferent to you. But according to a new book by Professor Cass Sunstein, they shouldn’t despair. Large social changes are often abrupt and unexpected, arising in an environment of seeming public opposition. The Communist Revolution in Russia spread so swiftly it confounded even Lenin. Seventy years later the Soviet Union collapsed just as quickly and unpredictably. In the modern era we have gay marriage, #metoo and the Arab Spring, as well as nativism, Euroskepticism and Hindu nationalism. How can a society that so recently seemed to support the status quo bring about change in years, months, or even weeks?

An article by Cass Sunstein: The Office of Legal Counsel can be seen as the Navy Seals of the U.S. Department of Justice. It consists of a relatively small, and quite powerful, group of lawyers who provide legal advice to the president and the Cabinet departments, often on the very hardest questions. If the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security disagree about a legal issue, OLC, as it is called, might well be asked to settle their dispute. If the question is whether Congress can require the president of the United States to hand over his tax returns, or whether the president can fire members of the Federal Reserve Board, or whether executive privilege applies to conversations not involving the president personally, or whether the president is immune from criminal prosecution – well, there is a good chance that OLC will have the final word, at least within the executive branch. This helps explain why Robert Mueller deferred to a crucial judgment of the OLC, to the effect that the president is immune from criminal prosecution as a matter of constitutional law. The special counsel was criticized for following the office’s opinion, but he was right to do so. Robert Mueller is a straight shooter.

Many faculty members at HLS focus their research on aspects of consumer law and protection.

An article by Cass Sunstein:  If we are living through historic events, would we know? In 1965, Arthur Danto, a philosopher at Columbia University, argued that it is impossible to tell, when you’re in the midst of things, whether an event is going to be deemed “historic” by future historians. If something happens – Russia successfully reclaims Crimea, for example, or Pete Buttigieg declares that he’s running for president – its ultimate significance will be determined by causal chains that cannot possibly be anticipated, and by an assortment of events that have yet to take place.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein:  New Zealand’s Labour coalition government has done something that could prove historic. Led by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, it has produced the world’s first “well-being” budget, focused explicitly on a single goal: using its limited funds to promote the well-being of its citizens.  Among other things, a lot of money will be devoted to three problems: mental illness, child poverty and family violence.

A book review by Samuel Moyn: Whenever I need to drive somewhere, I use Waze. The app saves me a lot of trouble, because it aggregates information to which I have no access and even plans how to distribute the traffic rationally to avoid clogging the roads. It has a lot of pop-up ads, but I try to ignore them because they seem a minor annoyance...But whatever its drawbacks, Waze marks a triumph for “navigability,” the ungainly term that Cass Sunstein uses in his new book, On Freedom, to describe how easy or difficult it is to get from here to there and, in the metaphorical sense, to achieve a goal once you’ve set one for yourself. For Sunstein, government ought to be more like Waze, helping people fulfill their desires and dreams, especially when they themselves are blocking that fulfillment. But any inquiry into navigability is inseparable from a much bigger theory of where our desires come from and how society fits them together not just with others’ but also into a common scheme of life. For too long, liberals have abstained from inquiring into what people want and have ignored how most obstructions come from neither the state nor the self but from a deregulated market and an unreformed society in which oppression is the rule.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein: Parody and satire are a legitimate part of public debate. Doctored videos are all over the place. Some are funny. Some are meant to make a point. Arguments of this kind are being made to support Facebook’s decision not to take down the doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in which she was made to appear drunk or otherwise impaired. One version, posted on the Facebook page Politics WatchDog, was seen over two million times in just a few days. There is no question that many viewers thought that the video was real. Acknowledging that it was fake, Facebook said, “We don’t have a policy that stipulates that the information you post on Facebook must be true.”

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein: Andrew Wheeler, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, recently released an important memorandum that makes terrific sense. In principle, it should improve the EPA’s performance -- and receive bipartisan applause. In practice? Well, that might be another story. The background is provided by two Supreme Court decisions. In 2009, the court ruled that whenever a congressional enactment is ambiguous, the EPA has the authority to consider the costs of its regulations and to weigh them against the benefits.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein: The English language needs a word for what happens when a group of people, outraged by some real or imagined transgression, responds in a way that is disproportionate to the occasion, thus ruining the transgressor’s day, month, year or life. We might repurpose an old word: lapidation. Technically, the word is a synonym for stoning, but it sounds much less violent. It is also obscure, which makes it easier to enlist for contemporary purposes. For a recent example of lapidation, consider the case of Ronald Sullivan, a Harvard law professor who joined the team of lawyers defending Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein against charges of rape and sexual abuse.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein: It’s increasingly clear that Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision protecting a woman’s right to choose abortion, is in jeopardy. But what is Roe all about? Privacy? Liberty? Women’s equality? Its survival may depend partly on the answer, so let’s go back to first principles. The Roe opinion, written by Justice Harry Blackmun in 1973, was entirely about privacy. As Blackmun put it, the right of privacy “is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” For two reasons, that’s awkward. First, the U.S. Constitution does not protect a general right of privacy at all. Second, any right of privacy, if it does exist, would not seem to encompass the right to choose abortion. Privacy usually refers to the right to control access to personal information.1 What does abortion have to do with that?

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein; Human beings really don’t like to be guinea pigs. Many people are inclined to rebel if they learn that they are in some kind of experiment. For private companies and for governments, that’s a big problem. Randomized experiments, often known as “A/B tests,” are the best way for private companies and public officials to learn what they should be doing if they want to save money and even lives.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein: President Donald Trump’s “protective assertion of executive privilege,” in response to a subpoena from the House Judiciary Committee, is creating a great deal of confusion. To dispel it, we have to see the trees, not the forest. To do that, it is crucial to understand that the subpoena called not only for the unredacted version of the Mueller report, but also for “[a]ll documents referenced in the Report” and “[a]ll documents obtained and investigative materials created by the Special Counsel’s office.”

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein: Is President Donald Trump legally entitled to withhold his tax returns from the House Committee on Ways and Means? Probably not – but it’s not simple. The governing legal text, known as section 6103, is buried in a lengthy set of provisions governing confidentiality and disclosure of tax returns. ... Representative Richard Neal, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, invoked section 6103 on April 3, when he asked for Trump’s federal income tax returns for 2013 through 2018 – along with the returns for eight organizations owned by or associated with Trump. At first glance, section 6103 authorizes Neal to get those returns.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein: If you are concerned about climate change, you are likely enthusiastic about renewable fuels, such as solar and wind, and about laws that require their use. For example, the Green New Deal calls for “meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources.” Unfortunately, new research shows that renewable-fuel mandates are an unusually expensive way to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The expense comes in the form of increased electricity prices, which are a particular problem for low-income consumers. A strong majority of states now have “renewable portfolio standards,” which require that a specified percentage of the electricity supply must come from renewables. In California, the 2030 target is 60 percent. In New York, it is 50 percent.

Bill McKibben says it might be curtains for humanity. Cass Sunstein says social movements may surprise you, but they shouldn’t. And a look at one controversial social movement: affirmative action. ... Cass Sunstein, How Change Happens: How many people do you think hold your same opinions? And how well do you think you could predict the next social movement? Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein says not to be so certain. His latest book is called How Change Happens.

At the heart of all politics and activism is the concept of change. People agitate, organize and vote because they believe that they can affect change in the world — or, in some cases, reverse changes that have already happened. But the process of change can be a bit mysterious. How does it happen? How can people make it happen? In his new book, "How Change Happens," Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein tackles these larger issues, looking at a history of social change and analyzing it for lessons that could be useful for those who seek to make changes to the status quo. He sat down with me recently on "Salon Talks" to discuss the way social movements get started and why what used to be considered common sense or can sometimes transform with surprising speed.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein: One of the great unresolved questions in American law is whether the president can control the decisions of the “independent” agencies, like the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Trade Commission. The Donald Trump administration has just moved in the direction of saying that the answer is yes.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein: In coming to terms with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report, we should adopt a principle of neutrality and put entirely to one side our enthusiasm, or our lack of enthusiasm, for President Donald Trump. It is also essential to emphasize that the report, running to two volumes and some 448 pages, will take some time to absorb. Even so, the most puzzling thing about it is unquestionably a single sentence, repeated several times: “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, neither does it exonerate him.” That is a singularly opaque sentence. What on earth does it mean? That’s a genuine mystery.