Cass Sunstein

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. U.S. Supreme Court justices may be wise, obtuse, fair or political, but we don't ordinarily think of them as eccentric. William O. Douglas, who was on the court in the middle of the 20th century, has long counted as the only unambiguously eccentric justice. But now, as an opinion on separation of powers issued last week makes clear, Justice Clarence Thomas has joined him. A judge can be counted as eccentric if he holds positions that don't fit with established law and that depart, frequently and significantly, from those that prevail within the court. A judge who is eccentric is not necessarily wrong, and eccentricity can be appealing. To many liberals, and especially to many law students, Justice Douglas seemed bold and admirably rebellious, in part because he was not bound by precedents.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Is law just a form of politics? Is the Supreme Court highly politicized? If you focus on the court’s anticipated divisions over Obamacare and same-sex marriage, you probably think so. But the court’s two dissent-free decisions Monday offer a different picture. They are a triumph for the ideal of a Supreme Court that focuses on law.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Is law just a form of politics? Is the Supreme Court highly politicized? If you focus on the court’s anticipated divisions over Obamacare and same-sex marriage, you probably think so. But the court’s two dissent-free decisions Monday offer a different picture. They are a triumph for the ideal of a Supreme Court that focuses on law.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. The controversy over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail account while serving as secretary of state raises issues that go beyond partisan positioning and any single official. The issue involves the arcane area of records management and its complicated role in the era of electronic communications. As a starting point, the idea of transparency is helpful, but it is far too simple to capture all the values and interests at stake. The public and the government alike benefit from clear, simple rules designed to increase efficiency, reduce costs and protect the historical record.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. The growing national concern about economic inequality raises many questions. One has to do with demographic groups. Are some doing better than others? If so, exactly why? A new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis shows that as most people assume, education is a key both to mobility and to the accumulation of wealth. But another important factor is economic decision-making. And when it comes to financial prudence, whites and Asian-Americans appear to be doing a lot better than Hispanics and African-Americans.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. The U.S. has a pressing need to increase the number of well-educated graduates in science, technology, engineering and math, pretty much everyone agrees...But why, exactly, aren’t more girls focusing on math and science?...A new study...indicates that much of the problem lies with biased primary school teachers, who have major and enduring influences on female achievement. That’s really hard to prove, but Victor Lavy of the University of Warwick and Edith Sand of Tel Aviv University found a way by studying children in Israel.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. The decision by a federal judge in Texas on Monday to strike down President Barack Obama’s immigration reform initiative runs to a whopping 123 pages. But the crucial ruling is fairly narrow: In adopting a plan to allow unlawful immigrants to apply for “deferred action,” Judge Andrew S. Hanen said, the Department of Homeland Security acted unlawfully because it did not allow the public to comment in advance. With this conclusion, Hanen almost certainly overreached.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Brian Williams and Sam Smith may have little in common, apart from being award-winning celebrities (Williams has 12 Emmys and Smith, four Grammys), but at the moment both are being held accountable for wrongdoing. Together, the two cases spotlight a risk that anyone in public life must run. Let’s call it the Denominator Problem. Over the course of a career, a politician, a news anchor, a musician, a movie star or a professional athlete will have said and done countless things. In this respect, they are no different from anyone else -- except that their statements and actions are subject to continual and sometimes obsessive public scrutiny.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Are Americans worried about climate change? Do they want their government to regulate greenhouse gases? A recent survey -- from Stanford University, the New York Times and Resources for the Future -- found that strong majorities say “yes” to both questions. But there’s a big catch, which isn't getting the attention it deserves: A strong majority also say that they oppose increasing taxes on either gasoline or electricity in order to reduce climate change. That’s important, because any serious effort to lower emissions is going to raise prices (certainly in the short run).

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas are famous for being “originalists”; they believe that constitutional provisions mean what they meant at the time they were ratified. In Scalia’s words, originalism promotes the rule of law, because it can help ensure a “rock-solid, unchanging Constitution.” Whether or not we agree, Scalia's goal is honorable: He wants to limit the discretion of federal judges and allow the American people to govern themselves. As the lawyers prepare their briefs for the upcoming Supreme Court argument about bans on same-sex marriage, how remarkable, then, that some prominent originalists -- and admirers of Scalia -- are saying that such bans are inconsistent with the original understanding of the 14th Amendment.

Statistics released by the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) indicate that, as of the end of 2014, Harvard Law School faculty members featured prominently on SSRN’s list of the 100 most-cited law professors.

...To investigate the role of motivated reasoning in the sort of institutional flip-flops that politicians and judges engage in, Harvard Law School professor Cass Sunstein and I conducted a series of surveys. In one, we asked people whether President Bush acted rightly by using a loophole to make appointments in defiance of Senate opposition. Most Republicans said he did the right thing while most Democrats said he acted wrongly. We then put Obama’s name in for Bush with a different group of respondents and asked the same question. This time the vast majority of Republicans opposed the appointments while most Democrats said he did the right thing.

An op-ed by Cass R. Sunstein. For many decades, the Supreme Court’s 1905 decision in Lochner v. New York has ranked among the most universally despised rulings in the history of American law. In that long-repudiated case, the court struck down a maximum-hours law for bakers. A week ago, Senator Rand Paul -- a likely candidate for president, and among the most influential members of the Republican Party -- explicitly embraced Lochner, and proudly endorsed the whole idea of “judicial activism.” That tells us a lot about contemporary law and politics, and probably about the future of conservative thinking as well.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. As recently as 20 years ago, it would have been pretty preposterous to argue that the U.S. Constitution requires states to recognize same-sex marriages. But there is a good chance that this summer, the Supreme Court will rule that it does. To the many people who believe in judicial restraint, or in following the original understanding of the document, such a dramatic shift in the Constitution’s meaning is alarming, even illegitimate. Are they right? A vivid answer can be found in an important but widely neglected speech from one of the greatest figures in the history of America law: Justice Thurgood Marshall.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Suppose you're watching a baseball game, and your favorite player, a terrific hitter with a .320 average, has struck out three times in a row. If you’re like most people, you might think, “He’s due!” -- and conclude that on his fourth at-bat, he’s likely to get a hit. Now suppose that you are working in a college admissions office. Your job is to evaluate 200 applicants, about 50 of whom will be admitted. You've just accepted three in a row, and now you might be inclined to think that the next two are unlikely to deserve admission. You might even evaluate their applications with that skeptical thought in mind.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Here's a quiz. Why did President Barack Obama take steps to normalize relations with Cuba? (a) To polish his legacy. (b) To improve the position of the Democratic Party for the 2016 election. (c) To weaken the Cuba lobby. (d) To show leadership. (e) None of the above. If you answered anything other than (e), you're wrong.

An article by Cass Sunstein and Reid Hastie. Why do governments enact, and stick with, policies that are plainly failing? Why do companies adopt foolish strategies that produce massive losses? Why do labor unions, law firms, and religious organizations make self-destructive errors? Over the past three decades, behavioral scientists have made progress in understanding why individuals make unwise choices and why groups do not correct, and frequently even aggravate, the mistakes of their members. The most common and devastating failure of the group process is incomplete information-sharing.

It’s been a bumpy ride for stocks in the first full week of 2015. And if you’re one of the many investors who vowed to be smarter with your investments in the New Year, you might be a little rattled...Cass Sunstein, a professor at Harvard Law School who studies behavioral economics, has some advice: Be informed but don’t follow the pack.

Cass Sunstein discusses his new book, Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Does your vote depend on which news channel you watch? If you are a regular viewer of Fox News, will you become more likely to vote Republican? Until recently, it has been impossible to answer that question empirically. Sure, Republicans tend to favor Fox News and Democrats tend to prefer MSNBC. But if Fox viewers are more likely to vote Republican, it might well be because of the conservative views that led them to Fox in the first place. An ingenious new study, by Gregory J. Martin and Ali Yurukoglu of Stanford University, explores whether people’s voting behavior really is influenced by what they see on cable news.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. It’s nearly the new year -- a time for resolving to eat less, exercise more, work harder, give more, get your financial situation in order, make a long-delayed life change. Why do we make such resolutions? The simplest explanation is that our highest aspirations for ourselves often conflict with our daily desires. Resolutions are designed to give our aspirations the upper hand. In the terms of modern social science, human beings engage in fast, automatic, short-term thinking, and also in slower, more deliberative, long-term thinking. When we make New Year’s resolutions, we're taking advantage of a “temporal landmark” that helps us to strengthen our best intentions.