Cass Sunstein

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Everyone agrees that under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, employers are forbidden from discriminating on the basis of sex. Are they also forbidden from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation? In a momentous decision earlier this week, with large implications for employers all over the country, a federal court of appeals ruled that they are. Superb opinions were delivered by both Judge Diane Wood, author of the majority opinion, and Judge Diane Sykes, author of the dissent.

An interview with Cass Sunstein. Back in 2010, Eric Schmidt, then-CEO of Google, had a vision for a personalized web. He said, in a Wall Street Journal interview, that one day, "technology will be so good, it will be very hard for people to watch or consume something that has not in some sense been tailored for them." Of course, Schmidt was exactly right — think Netflix, Pandora, Google News. But, according to Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein, that personalization, especially on social media, has also isolated us, polarized our political parties and divided our democracy.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Contrary to numerous reports, President Donald Trump’s executive order on climate change does not come even close to eliminating President Barack Obama’s legacy with respect to greenhouse-gas reductions. Most of that legacy, involving dramatic emissions cuts in the transportation sector and from household appliances, remains intact.

What would possess two Obama Administration veterans to propose that the Trump Administration—which on Tuesday revoked much of Obama's climate legacy—implement a cap and trade program to reduce auto emissions? A new cap-and-trade proposal was unveiled Monday by Cass Sunstein, now of Harvard Law School, who headed Obama's effort to streamline regulations, and Michael Greenstone, now of the University of Chicago, who served as chief architect of Obama's "social cost of carbon" policy, which enabled the government to consider the climate impacts of nearly everything it does—until Trump abandoned the policy yesterday.

Economists and regulatory experts are proposing a cap-and-trade system for vehicle greenhouse gas emissions to replace existing fuel economy standards...Michael Greenstone and Sam Ori from the University of Chicago's Energy Policy Institute and Cass Sunstein, former President Obama's head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and now a legal scholar at Harvard University, saw an opening...Sunstein, one of the country's leading legal scholars, argued that EPA could implement the system after 2025 without passing legislation because it is required to regulate tailpipe emissions. "The Trump administration has a policy challenge," he said. "They seem inclined to think that it's too aggressive now, but how to form a new proposal is very much in their hands...If the legal and administrative challenges can be met, they can meet their own goals, which is having something less burdensome, and energy savings goals."

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Charles Schumer, the leader of the Senate minority, has said that he will ask Democrats to filibuster the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch. In response to that request, the Senate Democrats have four options. Each of them has considerable appeal, but each also runs into significant objections.

...In a new book, “#Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media,” Harvard Law School’s Cass R. Sunstein argues that social media curation dramatically limits exposure to views and information that don’t align with already-established beliefs, which makes it harder and harder to find an essential component of democracy — common ground. In an email exchange, Sunstein, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard, talked about how America needs to restore “serendipity” online and bring back the conditions necessary for a healthy democracy in the digital era.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Robert Silvers, who died on Monday morning, was the editor of the New York Review of Books since 1963, meaning that for more than 50 years he presided over the leading literary magazine in the English language. I was privileged to work with him on numerous occasions, going back to 1992. He was not only a giant, but also the incarnation of what a democracy needs: civility, considerateness, fairness, authenticity, humility and unfailing attention to detail, which, in his hands, turned out to be a form of love.

Cass Sunstein wants you to get out of your bubble. In fact, the Harvard Law School professor says that democracy depends on it. “In a well-functioning democracy, people do not live in echo chamber or information cocoons,” Sunstein writes at the outset of his new book, #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media...Social media lacks the characteristics that make cities great, Sunstein says. A Twitter feed full of people who think the same things, “might seem liberating because all that clutter is gone, but you’re putting a jail sentence on yourself,” he says.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Small businesses and startups are responsible for a big chunk of U.S. economic growth and job creation. Unfortunately, many of them are stymied by state and federal regulation. The good news is that the Regulatory Flexibility Act, originally enacted in 1980, could provide a lot of help. If the administration of President Donald Trump starts to pay attention to it, it could give that tired old law a lot more energy – and promote important economic goals.

An interview with Cass Sunstein. A well-functioning democracy depends on people interacting with a wide range of people and ideas. As the internet and social media grow ever more sophisticated and targeted, they threaten democracy by creating “echo chambers” and “information cocoons.” So says a Harvard professor of behavioral economics, who offers practical and legal solutions.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. A Republican president takes office, vowing to eliminate job-killing regulations issued by his Democratic predecessor. In his first weeks, the automobile industry publicly asks him to eliminate specific regulations that are, in its view, crushingly burdensome. He agrees. Sound familiar? It should. But we’re speaking of 1981, not 2017, and of Ronald Reagan’s decision to repeal one of the central achievements of the Jimmy Carter administration: a rule designed to reduce highway deaths and injuries by requiring “passive restraints,” such as airbags, in motor vehicles.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. In one of his few statements since joining government, presidential adviser Stephen Bannon announced that one of the Trump administration’s principal goals was “the deconstruction of the administrative state.” Given the critical role of federal agencies in protecting public health and safety, that’s pretty provocative. But President Donald Trump’s latest action suggests that reform is the aim, rather than deconstruction -- and the reform might even turn out to be reasonable.

An interview with Cass Sunstein. This week, Ian Sample explores the psychology behind ‘nudging’, its usage by governments, and some of the ethical quandaries involved.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein...In the very month in which the nation’s capital seems to be overrun by deregulatory fever, it was announced that in 2016, more than 40,000 Americans died in accidents involving motor vehicles. That’s a significant jump from 2015, when traffic deaths also increased from the year before. The United States should not accept that level of human tragedy. The good news is that the Department of Transportation knows a lot about what might help -- and, yes, regulation is a part of the picture. In the coming year, the department’s new leadership and the White House ought to mount an aggressive effort, working alongside the private sector and state and local officials, to reduce deaths on roads and highways.

NPR's Kelly McEvers speaks to Cass Sunstein about his new book, #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media. He says democracy needs people to come across a variety of viewpoints, and much of social media limits that exposure.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. In light of the recent White House controversies, it is inevitable that some people are starting to wonder whether, at any point, President Donald Trump might be impeachable. The best way to answer that question is to bracket controversies about any particular president and to ask: What, exactly, does the Constitution say about impeachment? As we shall see, Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, was altogether wrong to proclaim that the president cannot be impeached unless he has broken the law. But Gerald Ford was even more wrong to say, in 1970 (when he was minority leader), that the House of Representatives can impeach the president on whatever grounds it likes.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. The first weeks of the Trump administration have not exactly been characterized by an excess of regular order. So there’s special reason to applaud a document it released last week that helps to make sense of one of the president's controversial actions -- an unprecedented executive order limiting regulation. The order itself, requiring agencies to eliminate two regulations whenever they issue a new one, produced applause, confusion and alarm when it was announced on Jan. 30. The good news is that the highly professional "interim guidance document" that quietly followed the order three days later answers numerous open questions about it, and does so quite sensibly and in just a few pages.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, to be announced on Tuesday, is likely to be some kind of “originalist.” For many conservatives, that’s terrific news. Improbably, originalism has become a litmus test, a simple way of distinguishing judges from politicians, using the Constitution to impose their values on the rest of us. But what is originalism?