| 1 | Name: | Professor Cass R. Sunstein | |
| Institution: | Harvard Law School | ||
| Year Elected: | 2010 | ||
| Class: | 3. Social Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 304. Jurisprudence and Political Science | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Living | ||
| Birth Date: | 1954 | ||
Cass Sunstein returned to Harvard Law School as the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law in September 2012 after taking a leave to serve for two years in the Obama administration as Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He was named University Professor in February 2013. Sunstein is the most prolific, versatile, and widely cited legal scholar of his generation. His extensive work on administrative law has been profoundly influential, helping to bring insights from cognitive science and behavioral economics to bear on problems of risk analysis and regulation. He has also been among the most influential scholars of constitutional law, developing the insights of civic republicanism and legal realism to show that claims of individual liberty are often better understood as problems of public distribution or social entitlement. Sunstein has written eloquently of the importance of democratic debate and deliberation, and the need to avoid tendencies toward extreme or polarized thought in settings as diverse as juries, appellate panels, and readership on the Internet. A frequent contributor of public legal commentary in venues like the New Republic, Sunstein is well-known for his ability to bring exceptional clarity to complex legal topics, and to integrate legal thought with the latest developments in social science. He is the author of: The Partial Constitution, (1993); Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict, (1996); (S. Breyer, et al) Administrative Law and Regulatory Policy, (1999); (R. Epstein) The Vote: Bush, Gore & the Supreme Court, (2001); The Cost-Benefit State, (2002); Why Societies Need Dissent, (2003); The Second Bill of Rights: Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever, (2006); Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge, (2006); Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide, (2009); On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done, (2009); Simpler: The Future of Government (2013), #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media (2017), Impeachment: A Citizen's Guide (2018), and Too Much Information: Understanding What You Don’t Want to Know (2020). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society in 2010. He won the Society's Henry M. Phillips Prize in 2007 in recognition of his intellectual leadership in Constitutional Law and Political Science, including in particular his profound research and writing demonstrating the complex interplay between jurisprudential constructs and the day by day resolution of legal conflicts. He was also named as a 2018 recipient of the Holberg Prize. | |||