Cass Sunstein

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. The White House was quick to condemn a federal judge’s decision last week striking down the Trump administration’s efforts to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. It called the ruling “outrageous,” and President Donald Trump tweeted that it shows “how broken and unfair our court system is.” But the judge’s decision to invalidate the program’s termination, and thus to protect young immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, was not outrageous. Strictly as a matter of law, it was eminently reasonable – whatever Congress does or does not do in the coming days and weeks.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. When people get new information – about immigration, about President Donald Trump, about climate change – will they change their minds? It’s common to say that if they don’t, the reason is “confirmation bias," which means that people are far more likely to accept information that supports their current beliefs. But in some situations, what really matters is something different and even more insidious: “desirability bias.” When people display desirability bias, they find information more credible when it pleases them – even if it fails to confirm their pre-existing beliefs.

...Harvard law professor and former Obama administration official Cass R. Sunstein has edited “Can It Happen Here: Authoritarianism in America,” essays by a diverse range of scholars on American democracy. The book was clearly inspired by Trump, but Sunstein said he doesn’t consider it a work of “resistance.” He calls it an “exploration of self-government” touching upon currents events and such historical moments as the internment of Japanese during World War II.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Above all else, the First Amendment is a barrier to “prior restraints” – injunctions and licensing requirements aimed at preventing speech from entering the public domain at all. Just as a new Steven Spielberg film, "The Post," is celebrating the vindication of that principle in the Pentagon Papers case, President Donald Trump’s lawyers have formally demanded that a publisher cease publication of a new book.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. If Olympic medals were awarded for the most powerful tools in behavioral economics, what would win the gold? The answer is clear: default rules, which decide what happens if people do nothing at all...Though people are free to change the default, they usually don’t -- which helps explain why that automatic enrollment in retirement programs or in energy plans can have a huge impact.

In 2010, Marc Estrin, a novelist and far-left activist from Vermont, found an online version of a paper by Cass Sunstein, a professor at Harvard Law School and the most frequently cited legal scholar in the world. The paper, called “Conspiracy Theories,” was first published in 2008, in a small academic journal called the Journal of Political Philosophy...“I was interested in the mechanisms by which information, whether true or false, gets passed along and amplified,” Sunstein told me recently. “I wanted to know how extremists come to believe the warped things they believe, and, to a lesser extent, what might be done to interrupt their radicalization. But I suppose my writing wasn’t very clear.”

The year 2017 may turn out to be when behavioral economics entered the mainstream after a leading practitioner in the field won a Nobel prize for his work. Behavioral economics is the study of how psychology affects the economic decision-making processes of individuals and institutions. Research in the field has led governments like those in the U.K. and U.S. to create teams of behavioral scientists to find ways to tweak citizens’ behavior to improve their welfare, for example, by helping more people enroll in retirement plans...Beyond the ethics, do people actually like when governments nudge them toward “better” behavior through defaults, labels and other means?...[Cass] Sunstein’s research suggests the answer is “yes,” most people “welcome nudges that help them live better lives.” “I have found that this enthusiasm usually extends across standard partisan lines,” he explained.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Whenever a President’s political opponents despise his policies, they are tempted to start talking about impeachment. That’s certainly true today, with increasing calls, on the part of President Trump’s harshest critics, for taking the impeachment process seriously. Whether Americans like Trump or loathe him, they need to understand what that process is all about. It’s a crucial part of the constitutional plan. Those who lived through the American Revolution rejected the idea of a monarchy. Without the power of impeachment, it’s doubtful that We the People would have ratified the Constitution at all.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. According to the most famous words of the First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech.” But what did the founders understand those words to mean?

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. One of the most spectacularly successful ideas in all of behavioral economics is Save More Tomorrow, by which employers ask employees if they would like to give some portion of their future wage increases to their retirement plans. An equally intriguing but largely untried idea is Give More Tomorrow, by which people take steps to increase their charitable donations – in the future. For nonprofits, employers and individuals, the holiday season would be a terrific time to take advantage of that idea.

George Lucas probably had no idea that Star Wars, his story about a moisture farmer going on an adventure, would change the course of storytelling. Memorable characters sure help set it apart from other science fiction, but Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein has good idea as to why it's such a global phenomenon. The original trilogy, he states, has something in it for everyone in that it tackles some very human problems: redemption, authoritarianism, and the appeal of darkness.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. From the very start of his presidency, Donald Trump has made it a high priority to reduce the level of federal regulation. And in 2017, the stock market has boomed. Many business leaders believe that this is hardly a coincidence, and that Trump’s deregulatory efforts have fueled the boom. Are they right? Probably not -- but it’s complicated.

President Trump is a compulsive liar who scorns the rule of law...What even some smart people don’t know is that the statement’s truth is, arguably, grounds to impeach Trump, even without his having committed a crime...For non-lawyers, that’s the big takeaway from “Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide,” a new book by Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein. The slim manual is a tour of the history behind the spare words the Constitution offers for when to remove high officials: ”treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Sunstein disavows what he calls the “fundamentally wrong” belief, uttered by many liberals (even House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi), that a president must break a law to be impeached.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Talk of impeaching President Trump surged after Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser and transition aide, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. But what is the real meaning of the Constitution’s mysterious provision authorizing removal of the president and other federal officials for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”? Is the growing interest in impeachment simply wishful thinking by Trump's political opponents?

...For months, Trump has insisted that the investigations into Russian meddling—investigations being conducted by the special counsel Robert Mueller and by both the Senate and House Intelligence Committees—amount to nothing more than fake news. But, as is so often the case when the President cries “fake news,” the truth soon emerges...The broad outlines of the grounds for impeachment are more or less settled. Cass Sunstein, a professor at Harvard Law School, who recently published “Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide,” told me, “The Framers wanted some kind of check on the executive, but they didn’t want to see impeachments for routine disagreements between Congress and the White House. They wanted to preserve the separation of powers, so they tried to set out criteria which would not compromise the executive branch.” One rule that’s clear is that an impeachable offense doesn’t have to be an actual crime.

A few weeks ago, I read a short new book by the legal scholar Cass Sunstein titled, simply, “Impeachment.” The book doesn’t mention President Trump once. Sunstein started writing it, he told me, partly because he was alarmed by what he considered reckless talk of impeachment during Trump’s first weeks on the job, before he had started doing much. Sunstein’s goal was to lay out a legal and historical framework for thinking about impeachment, independent of any specific president.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. We’re nearing the end of 2017, which means that it’s time to announce the most coveted of the annual movie awards: the Behavioral Economics Oscars (Becons for short). Created just a few years ago, the Becons, as they are called, have taken the film industry by storm.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Imagine that at Thanksgiving dinner, you find yourself seated next to a cousin you like a lot but rarely see -- or better still, a devastatingly attractive friend of the family, someone you think you'd like to know better. Here’s a quiz: What’s the best way to make a good impression?

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein...To be sure, no one is above the law. Political opponents of a president cannot claim immunity from prosecution. But the bar must be set very high. That conclusion is vindicated not only by principle, but also by longstanding traditions. Whether Republican or Democratic, American presidents have been extraordinarily reluctant to call for prosecution of their political rivals. They have looked forward rather than backward. With his enthusiasm for prosecuting Hillary Clinton, President Donald Trump is breaking that longstanding norm of American democracy.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. In all the talk these days about the Constitution’s impeachment provision, there is widespread confusion about the meaning of the document’s mysterious words making the president, the vice president and other high-level officials impeachable for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” If you want to know what impeachment is all about, it’s best to put contemporary issues to one side and start with a document that should unite each and every American: the Declaration of Independence.