Cass Sunstein

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Cass R. Sunstein (born 1954) is a prominent law professor at the University of Chicago Law School.

1 Early life and education
2 Career
3 Legal philosophy
4 External links

[edit] Early life and education

Sunstein was born in 1954. He graduated in 1972 from the Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts and in 1975 from Harvard College, where he was a member of the varsity squash team and a member of the board of editors of the Harvard Lampoon, with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Sunstein graduated in 1978 from Harvard Law School with a Juris Doctor, magna cum laude, where he was executive editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review and part of the winning team of the Ames Moot Court Competition. He served as a law clerk first for Justice Benjamin Kaplan of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (1978-1979) and later clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the Supreme Court (1979-1980).

[edit] Career

Sunstein worked in the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department as an Attorney-Advisor (1980-1981) and then became an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School (1981-1983). Sunstein later became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science as well (1983-1985). Sunstein was made a full professor in the Law School and Department of Political Science in 1985 and was named the Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence in the Law School and Department of Political Science in 1988. He was given his current title of Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence, Law School and Department of Political Science in 1993. Sunstein has been a visiting professor of law at Columbia Law School (as the Samuel Rubin Visiting Professor of Law, fall 1986), and at Harvard Law School (spring 1987 and winter 2005).

Sunstein's 2006 book, Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge explores methods for aggregating information; it contains discussions of prediction markets, open-source software, and wikis. Sunstein's 2004 book The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More than Ever discussed the Second Bill of Rights proposed by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt proposed a right to an education, a right to a home, a right to health care, a right to protection against monopolies, and more; Sunstein argues that the Second Bill of Rights has had a large international impact and should be revived in the United States. His 2001 book Republic.com argued that the Internet may weaken democracy because it allows citizens to isolate themselves within groups that share their own views and experiences, and thus cut themselves off from any information that might challenge their beliefs, a phenomenon known as cyberbalkanization.

His other books include After the Rights Revolution (1990), The Partial Constitution (1993), " Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech" (1995), Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict (1996), Free Markets and Social Justice (1997), One Case at a Time (1999), Risk and Reason (2002), Why Societies Need Dissent (2003), Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle (2005), Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right-Wing Courts Are Wrong for America (2005), and Are Judges Political? An Empirical Analysis of the Federal Judiciary (2005).

Sunstein is a contributing editor to The New Republic and is a frequent witness before congressional committee. He played an active role in opposing the impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998 In recent years, Sunstein has been a guest writer on The Volokh Conspiracy blog as well as the blogs of fellow law professors Lawrence Lessig (Stanford) and Jack Balkin (Yale).

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 1992) and the American Law Institute (since 1990).

[edit] Legal philosophy

Sunstein is a proponent of judicial minimalism, arguing that judges should focus primarily on deciding the case at hand, and avoid making sweeping changes to the law or decisions that have broad-reaching effects. He is generally thought to be liberal, although he has publicly supported various of George W. Bush judicial nominees Michael McConnell and John Roberts. Much of his work also brings behavioral economics to bear on law, suggesting that the "rational actor" model will sometimes produce an inadequate understanding of how people will respond to legal intervention.