Cass Sunstein

Cass Sunstein, a professor at Harvard Law School and one of the nation's top administrative legal scholars, spoke about the constitutional history of impeachment at a Harvard Coop lecture last Thursday...Sunstein's lecture was primarily focused on providing a historical perspective on the impeachment process. He explained how there was a great deal of debate amongst the Founders regarding how impeachment should be defined in the U.S. Constitution. "Virginia's [Constitutional Convention delegate] George Mason was the most eloquent. He said 'No point is of more importance than that the right of impeachment should be continued... Shall any man be above Justice? Above all shall that man be above it, who can commit the most extensive injustice?'"...Sunstein did turn to the question of President Trump's impeachability during the Q and A portion of the event. He said that many of the previous concerns over Trump's presidency — that he's unfit for the office, that he's violating the oath of office — don't meet the threshold for impeachable offenses.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein: Some observers are wondering whether the Supreme Court will let President Donald Trump keep his tax records secret. With respect to presidential prerogatives, many fundamental issues remain open. Perhaps the current court will resolve this one in his favor? That's unlikely. Whatever one's political convictions, it's hard to object, on strictly legal grounds, to a federal appeals court decision this week rejecting Trump's effort to block a subpoena issued by New York prosecutors demanding the records. In fact, the case is so simple and straightforward that it wouldn't be terribly surprising if the justices decline to consider it at all.

Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law School professor and a leading constitutional law scholar, has written one of the most compelling books on impeachment. Just don’t ask him if President Donald Trump should be impeached. “Of course he should be,” Sunstein writes in the preface to a newly reprinted edition of his book, “Impeachment: A Citizen's Guide.” He adds, “He obstructed justice not once but ten times.” In the next paragraph Sunstein writes: “Alternatively: Of course he shouldn’t be. The very question is ridiculous.” He adds, “This book does not choose between these two views. It does not say whether President Donald Trump should be impeached.”

An article by Cass Sunstein:  What divides the right and the left? Not 50 years ago, or 20 or even 10 years ago, but right now? Here’s one speculation: Conservatives tend to be localists; they focus on their families, their towns, their states and their nation. Progressives are far more likely to be universalists who focus on human beings as such. New evidence strongly supports this speculation, and explains a lot about current political divisions, not only in the U.S. and Canada but also in Europe and elsewhere. It also offers concrete lessons for aspiring politicians, whether they’re on the right or the left.

An article by Cass Sunstein:  Why is it that when you check out of a hotel the bill is always so much larger than expected? It’s the assortment of unexpected fees — resort fees, destination fees, cleaning fees, hotel fees and more — that no one mentions until you’re leaving. Congress wants to do something about this. The House of Representatives is considering legislation that would increase transparency by requiring a room’s advertised rate to include all mandatory fees except those imposed by government. This bipartisan Hotel Transparency Act of 2019 is a terrific idea.

An article by Cass Sunstein: What divides the right and the left? Not 50 years ago, or 20 or even 10 years ago, but right now? Here’s one speculation: Conservatives tend to be localists; they focus on their families, their towns, their states and their nation. Progressives are far more likely to be universalists who focus on human beings as such. New evidence strongly supports this speculation, and explains a lot about current political divisions, not only in the U.S. and Canada but also in Europe and elsewhere. It also offers concrete lessons for aspiring politicians, whether they’re on the right or the left. The relevant studies were conducted by a team of researchers led by Northwestern University’s Adam Waytz and including New York University’s Jonathan Haidt, who has done the defining work on the differences between conservatives and progressives. Their principal finding is that conservatives show a clear preference for tighter and “more defined” social circles, emphasizing “their immediate social groups,” while progressives favor looser circles, and express “compassion toward individuals broadly construed.”

An article by Patrick McDonnell ('21), Jacques Singer-Emery ('20), and Nathaniel Sobel ('20): Then-Rep. Gerald Ford once defined an impeachable offense as “whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.” But legal scholars have concluded that impeachment is considerably more law-governed, and constrained, than Ford suggested. They draw on clues from the Founders, the text and structure of the Constitution, and the history of presidential impeachments (and near-impeachments) to make varying arguments about the impeachment power and the range of impeachable offenses. For this post, we read eleven of the leading scholarly works on impeachment so that you don’t have to...And of a more recent vintage, we cover a collection of Trump-inspired works, including books by Cass Sunstein, Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz.

An article by Cass Sunstein: In terms of public health, one of the worst air pollutants is fine particulate matter. From 2009 to 2016, average levels of these particulates in the ambient air in the U.S. plummeted by 24.2 percent. That’s the good news. The bad news is that from 2016 to 2018, average levels jumped by 5.5 percent. As a result of that increase, 4,900 Americans died prematurely in 2017, and 9,700 died prematurely in 2018, according to the government’s own estimates of the likely effects of exposure to fine particulate matter. In short, the air got a lot cleaner during the years when Barack Obama was president (preventing tens of thousands of premature deaths), and has become a lot dirtier under President Donald Trump. But instead of scoring political points or assigning blame, let’s try to understand what is happening, with the help of new research from economists Karen Clay and Nicholas Muller of Carnegie Mellon University.

Book reviews by Cass Sunstein: President Donald Trump has a favorite epithet, a term of contempt: “like a dog.” Mitt Romney could have been president, but he “choked like a dog.” Broadcaster David Gregory was “fired like a dog.” In a presidential debate, Senator Marco Rubio started to “sweat like a dog.” Brent Bozell of the National Review came “begging for money like a dog.” In their Senate testimony, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former acting Attorney General Sally Yates started “to choke like dogs.” Referring to his former assistant Omarosa Manigault Newman, the president writes, “Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!” What does it actually mean, to be “like a dog”? ... But in view of recent research, it is increasingly difficult to believe that people domesticated dogs. It is far more likely that dogs domesticated themselves. We did not choose them. They chose us.

Attorneys for President Donald Trump were wrong to think they should have the right to cross-examine witnesses, and call their own individuals, in the impeachment inquiry from Democrats in Congress, prominent legal scholar Cass Sunstein said Tuesday evening. That was part of Sunstein’s comments at an event held by the New York State Bar Association at Fordham University School of Law in Manhattan. Sunstein, a professor at Harvard Law School, was invited to speak by the State Bar to talk about the legal process and ramifications of impeachment, which has been on the minds of many as Democrats continue their formal inquiry into Trump this week...“The argument was that the president has been denied due process because there’s no cross examination going on in the House,” Sunstein said. “The first thing to say is that it’s not a criminal trial and there’s no right in these things to cross examination.”

An article by Cass Sunstein:  The discussion of President Donald Trump’s record on regulation is distressingly tribal. Emphasizing the importance of environmental protection, worker safety and civil rights, his harshest critics see deregulation as a dirty word. Complaining of regulation run riot in the past, his most enthusiastic supporters celebrate the smallest changes as heroic efforts to restore freedom to a nation that lies prostrate and humiliated before all-powerful bureaucrats. But on some occasions, the administration does something that all tribes should be willing to endorse. That was the case last week when Trump issued two executive orders designed to improve the operation of the regulatory state. They aren’t exactly earth-shattering, but in terms of the operations of the U.S. government, they are unquestionably important.

The 2016 presidential campaign showcased the worst of Facebook. Remember the headline “Pope Francis shocks world, endorses Donald Trump for president”? That story had nearly 1 million Facebook impressions by Election Day, prompting the pope to call such fake news a “sin” and a “sickness.”...A new Facebook decision, though, could play havoc with the 2020 election. Facebook executive Nick Clegg announced that the company’s 30,000 contracted content moderators are no longer fact-checking political ads, which he said amounted to censorship. Moderators will block “previously debunked content” — but fresh lies will be allowed. As Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein noted, having the company stay out of fact-checking will make it less likely to face claims of political bias for keeping certain allegations off its platform.

Cass Sunstein, Harvard Law School professor and the author of Impeachment: A Citizen's Guide (Penguin Books, 2019), and Henry Greenberg, president of the New York State Bar Association and partner at Greenberg Traurig, LLP, discuss the legal issues surrounding impeachment.

An article by Cass Sunstein: The White House’s fierce response to the impeachment inquiry by the House of Representatives, calling the enterprise “an unconstitutional effort” and a violation of “constitutionally mandated due process,” seems to make one commitment: noncooperation. The key sentence in the eight-page letter, signed by White House counsel Pat A. Cipollone, is this: “Given that your inquiry lacks any legitimate constitutional foundation, any pretense of fairness, or even the most elementary due process protections, the Executive Branch cannot be expected to participate in it.”

An article by Cass Sunstein: All over the world, truth is in trouble. What are we going to do about that? Unfortunately, Facebook’s new policy on political advertisements is a step in the wrong direction. 1 By exempting “politicians” from its third-party fact-checking program, designed to reduce the spread of lies and falsehoods in ads, the company is essentially throwing up its hands. With some urgency, it should be seeking new ways to reduce the risk that lies and falsehoods will undermine the democratic process.

Legal experts have dismissed claims that President Donald Trump will be permitted to run for a third term if he is impeached by the House but the Senate fails to confirm it, branding them "categorically false." ... Indeed, there appears to be an information gap generated by the announcement of the impeachment inquiry, given there are so few examples to draw from, explained professor at Harvard Law School Cass Sunstein, the author of Impeachment: A Citizen's Guide and a former Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration. "If a person is indicted by a prosecutor it's not a trivial matter, even if there is no conviction, and you can see impeachment as similar to an indictment," Sunstein told Newsweek. "It is a real mark on a human being and even more impeachment is a real mark on a president. There have only been two indictments in our history and they have both had a huge impact on what that person could do while president and also on their historical standing."

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein: President Donald Trump is not reluctant to accuse people of treason. On Sunday, Trump targeted Representative Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, proclaiming on Twitter that he wanted the California Democrat “questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason.” On Monday, he elaborated, musing that a “fake and terrible statement” by Schiff might just be grounds for his “Arrest for Treason? Trump’s tweets are often over-the-top. But these were particularly heinous because they are inconsistent with a key provision of the U.S. Constitution, and call up the very concerns that motivated its drafting. Treason is the only crime specifically defined in the U.S. Constitution: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

MSNBC’s Richard Lui outlines the process for impeaching a sitting U.S. President, and discusses the current impeachment inquiry into President Trump with Cass Sunstein, a Harvard University Law Professor and author of the book “Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide,” Krishna Patel, a former assistant U.S. attorney, and Katie Phang, an MSNBC legal contributor. Sunstein provides background on what types of actions qualify as “impeachable offenses,” while Patel and Phang give their thoughts on what will happen next in regards to the impeachment inquiry. Phang also noted that while Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, could theoretically decide to go against a House impeachment vote and elect not hold a trial, that would be highly unlikely, as the optics would be very poor.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein: Soon the House of Representatives will have to decide what, if any, alleged misconduct by President Donald Trump should go into formal articles of impeachment. Some of those decisions will be hard. But here’s an easy one: Under the Constitution, the House should not consider any actions, however terrible, that Trump took before he became president. (There’s one exception; we’ll get to it in due course.) This principle has bite. For example, it would exclude Trump’s alleged involvement in his lawyer’s hush-money payments to cover up sexual encounters with the porn star Stormy Daniels and the Playboy model Karen McDougal. It would also exclude misconduct by Trump’s businesses before 2017.

Legal scholars who have studied impeachment say it was not intended as a means to remove a president who commits any crime or loses the support of other politicians. Rather, it was designed for removing from office a chief executive who grossly misuses his authority to benefit himself and sacrifices the public good. ...Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein, who like Gerhardt, wrote a book on impeachment, stressed that the Constitution sets a high standard for impeachable offenses. If the president was shown to be a shoplifter or accused of disorderly conduct or even cheats on his taxes, those alone would not be grounds for impeachment, Sunstein said. “The idea of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ is not a political term. It was understood as a legal term which came with a history,” he said. ... Many scholars have tried to define those terms. In their book “To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment,” Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe and Washington lawyer Joshua Matz wrote last year that “impeachable offenses involve corruption, betrayal or an abuse of power that subverts core tenets of the U.S. governmental system. They require proof of intentional, evil deeds that risk grave injury to the nation.”

Cass Sunstein, professor at Harvard Law and author of 'Impeachment: A Citizen's Guide', explains what the process would look like for President Trump.