Cass Sunstein

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. In recent years, American progressivism has been torn between two competing approaches to reducing inequality. The first focuses on the top 1 percent; the second emphasizes the bottom 10 percent. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have been operating within the terms set by Top 1 Percent progressivism. For both the Democratic Party and the country, that’s the wrong focus.

Threats of insurrection have always been met with more than easy bromides, however. But even so, it’s startling to see how much the debate has changed recently. Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein, a former official in the Obama administration, has asked whether it’s time to reject the “clear and present danger” standard in favor of one that suppresses “explicit or direct incitement to violence, even if no harm is imminent.”

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Bernie Sanders is the oldest candidate in the presidential race, but as of now, he seems to be the younger generation’s candidate. According to a recent survey, Sanders is favored by 46 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 34, where Hillary Clinton is preferred by 35 percent. What’s going on here? Here are two stories, which offer some clues. In 2009, the vast majority of Republican senators opposed my nomination to serve as administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Democratic senators were overwhelmingly supportive (with the exception of a few relative conservatives). Just one liberal threatened to join the opposition: Bernie Sanders. Before the vote, he agreed to talk to me about his objection. It was simple: I didn’t want to regulate “the banks.” I answered that the job for which I had been nominated didn’t much involve banks, and in any case I agreed that more bank regulation was a good idea. My response was ineffective: He reiterated that I didn’t want to regulate the banks, and went on to vote against me.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. For all their differences, the presidential candidates share one defining characteristic: All of them are upbeat about the future (as long as they get elected). In one of the most important books of recent years, Northwestern University economist Robert J. Gordon offers a radically different view. When it comes to the American economy, Gordon is a pessimist. He thinks that past growth was a historical anomaly, spurred by a series of great inventions in the late 19th Century, above all electricity and the internal-combustion engine.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. In last week’s State of the Union address, President Barack Obama appeared to get his biggest bipartisan applause for this line: “I think there are outdated regulations that need to be changed. There is red tape that needs to be cut.” Republican presidential candidates have spoken in the same terms, though more emphatically. One of their most urgent priorities is to reduce the stock of existing regulations, and slow the flow of new ones as well. Sure, Democrats like regulation more than Republicans do, but with the current focus on economic growth and national competitiveness, there’s both a need and an opportunity for bipartisan agreement here -- if not this year, at least in 2017.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. As just about everyone knows by now, Senator Ted Cruz was born in Canada, to a Cuban-born father and a mother who was a U.S. citizen. Cruz held Canadian citizenship for nearly all of his life, relinquishing it only in 2014, when he was planning to run for the presidency. Is he eligible to hold the office he seeks? This is a question of constitutional law, not of politics; it should be approached as such. Respected analysts have shown that the question is not simple to answer. The Constitution states that the president must be “natural born,” but doesn't define that term. The Supreme Court has never ruled on the issue; if it did, it would find a murky history.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein: Why does misinformation spread so quickly on the social media? Why doesn’t it get corrected? When the truth is so easy to find, why do people accept falsehoods? A new study focusing on Facebook users provides strong evidence that the explanation is confirmation bias: people’s tendency to seek out information that confirms their beliefs, and to ignore contrary information. Confirmation bias turns out to play a pivotal role in the creation of online echo chambers. This finding bears on a wide range of issues, including the current presidential campaign, the acceptance of conspiracy theories and competing positions in international disputes.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Among Republicans, it has become politically correct to be politically incorrect. Actually that’s the most politically correct thing that you can possibly be. As soon as you announce that you’re politically incorrect, you’re guaranteed smiles and laughter, and probably thunderous applause. Proudly proclaiming your bravery, you’re pandering to the crowd. A math-filled new paper, by economists Chia-Hui Chen at Kyoto University and Junichiro Ishida at Osaka University, helps to explain what’s going on. With a careful analysis of incentive structures, they show that if self-interested people want to show that they are independent, their best strategy is to be politically incorrect, and to proclaim loudly that’s what they are being. The trick is that this strategy has nothing at all to do with genuine independence; it’s just a matter of salesmanship, a way to get more popular.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. In just four years, the Behavioral Economics Oscars, widely known as the Becons, have become the most eagerly awaited of the year-end movie awards (even if the highly influential awards committee consists of just one person). Finally, the wait is over. A standing (and fully rational) ovation for the Becon winners of 2015:

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. These days, Americans don’t think a lot about Taiwan. That’s a shame. A thriving democracy in a region with too few of them, Taiwan also faces unique challenges, not least because of its ambiguous legal status and the possibility that it will eventually be absorbed into China -- perhaps by force. Elections next month, which a pro-independence party is expected to win, could mark a turning point. Americans have plenty of reason to pay attention.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Behavioral science has become the usual term for psychological and economic research on human behavior, often designed to explore people’s biases and blunders. For that research, 2015 has been a banner year, with an unusually large number of important books. Five of them stand out -- and two of these weren’t even written by social scientists.

It was a galactic head fake from one of Harvard’s eminent legal scholars. Cass Sunstein wowed a crowd at Harvard Law School during a talk on his love for one of the 20th century’s cultural touchstones: “Star Wars.” Sunstein, the Robert Walmsley University Professor, said the film that spawned both prequels and sequels — including “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” out Dec. 18 — was a seminal source of inspiration in his life and career. “I became a political science major only because of those ‘Star Wars’ movies. You saw those movies, and you had to focus on political science,” said Sunstein, adding that his love of behavioral science grew out of his fascination with the film’s storm troopers. He said that Supreme Court Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall, for whom he clerked after law school, was his substitute for the film’s all-knowing mentor, Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi. Then, Sunstein let his listeners in on his joke.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Do you think that this is a profound statement? “Intention and attention are mystery’s manifestation.” What about this one? “Hidden meanings transform unseen beauty.” Both statements are, of course, bullshit, understood in a particular sense: not a lie, but a kind of verbal smokescreen, designed to suggest depth and insight but actually vague, vacuous or meaningless. As we’ll see, an understanding of pretentious-sounding gibberish and its frequent power tells us something important about contemporary politics. But we need a little social science first.