Cass Sunstein

Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform from 2009 to 2011, answers questions about the Affordable Care Act.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this week on several major cases including United States v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry in regard to same-sex marriage, Fisher v. University of Texas on Affirmative Action, and Shelby County v. Holder, which concerned the Voting Rights Act of 1965. A number of HLS faculty shared their opinions of the rulings on the radio, television, on the web and in print.

Ronald M. Dworkin LL.B. ’57, renowned legal scholar and philosopher, died on Feb. 13, 2013. In the days since, a number of Harvard Law School professors have written pieces about Dworkin, who was a towering figure in the legal world.

Cass Sunstein ’78, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law and director of HLS’s new Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy, has been named a University Professor, Harvard University President Drew Faust announced today. Harvard’s highest honor for a faculty member, University Professorships were established in 1935 to recognize individuals whose work on the frontiers of knowledge crosses the traditional boundaries of academic disciplines.

Scholars and social media experts convened at Harvard Law School Feb. 6 to examine the ways in which electronic interactive media can sway human decision-making and behavior. The conference, “Social Media and Behavioral Economics,” was sponsored by Harvard Law School's new Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy and created by the program’s director, Cass Sunstein ’78.

In recent weeks, a number of HLS faculty have weighed in on issues surrounding the fiscal cliff negotiations.

In October 1962, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at Harvard Law School on “The Future of Integration.” It was six months before he would be imprisoned in a Birmingham jail, 10 months before the March on Washington, almost two years before the signing of the Civil Rights Act and almost six years before his assassination. “It may be that the law cannot make a man love me,” he said, “but it can keep him from lynching me.”

Cass Sunstein ’78, administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), will return to the Harvard Law School faculty as Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law following his planned departure in August from the Obama Administration, Dean Martha Minow announced today.

Here’s the scorecard: Bush: $3.4 billion. Clinton: $14 billion. Obama: $91.3 billion. These numbers represent the net monetary benefits of final, federal agency regulations issued through the third fiscal year of each of these administrations. They were presented to HLS students and faculty on March 26 by Cass R. Sunstein, former Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law and current administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, a department within the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. As administrator, Sunstein oversees the federal government’s entire regulatory process. He was on campus to discuss “New Directions in Regulatory Policy.”

In his essays, Samuel Moyn considers topics such as human rights and the Holocaust, international courts, and liberal internationalism. Skeptical of humanitarian justifications for intervention, he writes,“[H]uman rights history should turn away from ransacking the past as if it provided good support for the astonishingly specific international movement of the last few decades.”

The U.S. Senate voted yesterday to confirm Harvard Law School Professor Cass Sunstein ’78 as administrator, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget.

This year, Harvard Law School alumni continued to make an impact in a variety of ways. Most notably, HLS alumni have filled the halls of…

The academic work of the Harvard Law School faculty is downloaded from the online database of the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) more frequently than that of any other law school faculty, according to the popular law blog, Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports. Works by HLS faculty were downloaded 107,591 times during the period studied for the survey.

Intelligent minds have long differed on the U.S. Constitution’s role as a blueprint for democracy. Some see it as the sacrosanct product of an enlightened era, its text to be followed literally. Others say that the Constitution must be interpreted more generally in order to apply its principles to current times.

2008 was a prolific year for HLS scholars. Here is a roundup of this year’s faculty books.