Cass Sunstein

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. In the U.S., voters are often drawn to candidates who seem to be the opposite of the incumbent president — the anti-Obama, the anti-Bush, the anti-Clinton. Beto O’Rourke, now running for the Senate in Texas against Republican incumbent Ted Cruz, is the anti-Trump.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. The scheduled testimony by Judge Brett Kavanaugh, responding to Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation of sexual assault in the early 1980s, raises a central question: With respect to that accusation, who has the burden of proof? In the coming weeks, the answer to that question might turn out to be decisive to Kavanaugh’s prospects for confirmation. Invoking the standard used in criminal law, some people have said that Judge Kavanaugh should be presumed innocent. Others say that senators should avoid any presumption and ask instead: Who is more credible? Who is the most likely to be telling the truth? It’s not so simple.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Suppose that you start college with a keen interest in physics, and you quickly discover that almost all members of the physics department are Democrats. Would you think that something is wrong? Would your answer be different if your favorite subject is music, chemistry, computer science, anthropology or sociology? In recent years, concern has grown over what many people see as a left-of-center political bias at colleges and universities. A few months ago, Mitchell Langbert, an associate professor of business at Brooklyn College, published a study of the political affiliations of faculty members at 51 of the 66 liberal-arts colleges ranked highest by U.S. News in 2017. The findings are eye-popping (even if they do not come as a great surprise to many people in academia).

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. The decision of David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, to rescind Steve Bannon’s invitation to speak at the magazine’s festival next month has created a storm of protest. Those who abhor Remnick’s decision point to similar controversies on university campuses, where a pervasive question has been whether to host people whose statements or actions seem abhorrent to many people. Disturbingly, most of the controversies involve people whose views are to the right of center.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Is President Donald Trump dismantling the regulatory state? Not close.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. On both sides of the political spectrum, a new argument is gaining traction: The impeachment of Bill Clinton is a strong precedent for the impeachment of Donald Trump. It’s a bad argument, unfair to both presidents.

But legal scholars said that committing crimes aimed at undermining the integrity of an election could well satisfy the constitutional standard for impeachment, which is set out in Article II, Section 4: “The president, vice president and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”...“If the president bribes members of the Electoral College in order to obtain office, it was clear from the debates that that was thought to be an impeachable offense,” said Cass R. Sunstein, a law professor at Harvard and the author of “Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide.” “That’s an exception to the general proposition that it has to be abuse of the authority you have by virtue of being president,” he said. “It was an effort to protect the sanctity — and I think sanctity is the right word — of the process by which someone becomes president.”...Of course, bribery is not the same thing as depriving voters of information by paying hush money. But both interfere with the democratic process, said Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard, the other author of “To End a Presidency” and a frequent critic of Mr. Trump. “The felonies of which Cohen, in statements that were self-incriminating and thus particularly trustworthy, accused his former client, the president, didn’t literally involve bribery,” he said, referring to Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former lawyer, “but certainly involved criminal conduct designed to reduce the risk that disclosure of his extramarital affairs and dalliances on the eve of the election would cost him the votes he ended up needing in places like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.”

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. A major source of the opioid crisis is overprescribing by well-meaning doctors who want to relieve patients’ pain, but are insufficiently focused on the risks. Could behavioral economics help change that — and save lives?...What can be done? Led by the University of Southern California’s Jason Doctor, a team of researchers found a dramatic way to nudge doctors to reduce opioid prescriptions. Their starting point was simple: When patients die, clinicians often don’t find out.

...In 2008, Harvard Law professors Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule penned an article on conspiracy theories and how they work. They argued that conspiracy theories — which they define as “an effort to explain some event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role” — are, in their own way, quite rational. “Most people are not able to know, on the basis of personal or direct knowledge, why an airplane crashed, or why a leader was assassinated, or why a terrorist attack succeeded,” they wrote. As a result, they search for information that fits what they already believe about the world and is confirmed by people they trust. Conspiracy theories, Sunstein and Vermeule argued, spread in a variety of ways. One of these pathways, called an “availability cascade,” happens when a group of people accept a conspiracy theory because their preexisting beliefs about the world make them likely to believe it.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. During a presidential campaign, accepting help from Russia “to get information on an opponent” is an ugly and unpatriotic act. It casts contempt on the countless people who have put their lives on the line for our republic and the principles for which it stands.

An op-ed by Anupam B. Jena, Cass R. Sunstein and Tanner R. Hicks. Justice is blind — or at least that’s the ideal. Across the United States, the law is administered by a million police officers and more than 30,000 state and federal judges. While these officials usually have good intentions, there’s increasing awareness of the role that racial and other biases often play in law enforcement decisions. What’s less well known is how idiosyncratic factors can shape how people are treated.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Whether something seems bad, unethical or horrifying depends on what else is happening out there. That helps explain why we often fail to appreciate amazing social progress — and why we can miss it when things are falling apart. To understand these points, consider a stunning new paper by a team of psychologists, led by David Levari of Harvard University. Their central idea has an unlovely name: “prevalence-induced concept change.” Their findings, based on a series of experiments, are profoundly reassuring in some respects, but also ominous in light of current political developments in the U.S. and elsewhere.

A book review by Cass Sunstein. Liberal democracy has enjoyed much better days. Vladimir Putin has entrenched authoritarian rule and is firmly in charge of a resurgent Russia. In global influence, China may have surpassed the United States, and Chinese president Xi Jinping is now empowered to remain in office indefinitely. In light of recent turns toward authoritarianism in Turkey, Poland, Hungary, and the Philippines, there is widespread talk of a “democratic recession.” In the United States, President Donald Trump may not be sufficiently committed to constitutional principles of democratic government. In such a time, we might be tempted to try to learn something from earlier turns toward authoritarianism, particularly the triumphant rise of the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein...The United States is not at war with Russia. People who are alarmed by President Trump’s statements in Helsinki are of course entitled to use the word “treasonous” in the colloquial sense — but not in the constitutional sense.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Many people feel devastated after their favorite team loses. Sometimes they have trouble sleeping. (Yes, I speak from personal experience.) That raises some legitimate questions: Why suffer? Is it even rational to be a sports fan? Recent research suggests that it might not be. On average, soccer, the most popular sport on the planet, makes people a lot less happy. The lesson is that if you’re strongly attached to your local team, you might be better off if you decide to disengage — starting right now.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. So it’s Judge Brett Kavanaugh. There will be time enough to explore the nominee’s views and record. Let’s step back a bit and get some perspective on the national debate that we are about to have.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. With respect to free speech, people seem increasingly drawn to a simple narrative. Those on the left used to like freedom of speech — but now, not so much. Those on the right used not to like free speech — but now they’re all in. The narrative is mostly wrong. Actually, it’s a mess. To see why, we need to look at the arc of history.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. At the outset of the most contentious Supreme Court confirmation battle in modern American history, Senator Ted Kennedy said the following: "Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy." That was hyperbolic, to say the least, but it was also effective; it signaled the magnitude of the stakes. Bork’s nomination in 1987 was defeated, and Anthony Kennedy — a far more moderate judge — was confirmed instead. Now Kennedy is retiring and the confirmation battle for his successor may well turn out to be the most contentious since Bork’s.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. U.S. courts have long been reluctant to intervene in the admissions decisions of colleges and universities. In general, the law allows them to do whatever they want within this overarching framework: 1. Racial discrimination is forbidden. 2. An institution may not maintain a racial quota system, even if it is sincerely seeking to ensure the presence of adequate numbers of traditionally disadvantaged groups, including African-Americans. 3. An institution may consider race as a “plus,” at least if it is seeking to create a diverse educational environment.