35 Facts About Cass Sunstein

Cass Robert Sunstein was born on September 21,1954 and is an American legal scholar known for his studies of constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, and behavioral economics.

Cass Sunstein is The New York Times best-selling author of The World According to Star Wars and Nudge.

Cass Sunstein was the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2012.

Since leaving the White House, Sunstein has been the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School.

In 2014, studies of legal publications found Cass Sunstein to be the most frequently cited American legal scholar by a wide margin.

Cass Sunstein then attended the Harvard Law School, where he became the executive editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review and was a member of the winning team of the Ames Moot Court Competition.

In 1985, Sunstein was made a full professor of both political science and law; in 1988, he was named the Karl N Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence in the Law School and Department of Political Science.

In 2009, Sunstein was described by fellow Chicago professor Douglas G Baird as a "Chicago person through and through".

Cass Sunstein was the Samuel Rubin Visiting Professor of Law at Columbia Law School in the fall of 1986 and a visiting professor at Harvard Law School in the spring 1987, winter 2005, and spring 2007 terms.

Cass Sunstein teaches courses in constitutional law, administrative law, and environmental law, as well as the required first-year course "Elements of the Law", which is an introduction to legal reasoning, legal theory, and the interdisciplinary study of law, including law and economics.

On January 7,2009, The Wall Street Journal reported that Cass Sunstein would be named to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

Cass Sunstein's confirmation was long blocked because of controversy over allegations about his political and academic views.

Cass Sunstein co-authored Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness with economist Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago.

Cass Sunstein is a contributing editor to The New Republic and The American Prospect and is a frequent witness before congressional committees.

Cass Sunstein played an active role in opposing the impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998.

In recent years, Cass Sunstein has been a guest writer on The Volokh Conspiracy blog as well as the blogs of law professors Lawrence Lessig and Jack Balkin.

Cass Sunstein is considered so prolific a writer that in 2007, an article in the legal publication The Green Bag coined the concept of a "Sunstein number" reflecting degrees of separation between various legal authors and Sunstein, paralleling the Erdos numbers sometimes assigned to mathematician authors.

Cass Sunstein is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Law Institute, and the American Philosophical Society.

Cass Sunstein received an Honorary Doctorate from Copenhagen Business School.

Cass Sunstein joined the Department of Homeland Security in February 2021 as an advisor to the Biden Administration on immigration policy.

Together with Daniel Kahneman and Olivier Sibony, Cass Sunstein co-authored Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, which was published in May 2021.

Cass 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.

Cass Sunstein has elaborated the theory of libertarian paternalism.

Cass Sunstein suggests that granting standing to animals, actionable by other parties, could decrease animal cruelty by increasing the likelihood that animal abuse will be punished.

In Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, Cass Sunstein proposes that government recognition of marriage be discontinued.

Cass Sunstein addressed the Senate on July 11,1996, advising against the Defense of Marriage Act.

Cass Sunstein co-authored a 2008 paper with Adrian Vermeule, titled "Conspiracy Theories", dealing with the risks and possible government responses to conspiracy theories resulting from "cascades" of faulty information within groups that may ultimately lead to violence.

In 2016, Cass Sunstein wrote of the Disney film franchise Star Wars that "Star Wars is about freedom of choice and our never-ending ability to make the right decision when the chips are down," comparing the importance of the films to the Bible, Santa Claus, and Mickey Mouse.

Club, Cass Sunstein stated that he felt "over the moon about Star Wars".

Cass Sunstein compared Star Wars to his work for the Obama administration, saying that his approach to regulatory reform was very similar to Lucas' constrained approach to the movies as "episodes".

Cass Sunstein is Associate Professor Emerita of English at the University of Chicago, specializing in British modernism.

On July 4,2008, Cass Sunstein married Samantha Power, a diplomat and government official who would serve as United States Ambassador to the United Nations, whom he met when they both worked as campaign advisors to Barack Obama.

Cass Sunstein is an avid amateur squash player who has played against professionals in PSA tournaments and in 2017 was ranked 449th in the world by the Professional Squash Association.

In July 2017, Cass Sunstein was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.

Cass Sunstein is widely regarded as the leading scholar of administrative law in the US, and he is by far the most cited legal scholar in the United States and probably the world.