15 Questions With Cass R. Sunstein ’75
After two decades at the University of Chicago, legal superstar Cass R. Sunstein ’75 is finally returning to Cambridge. The erstwhile ’Poonster and Currier House resident took time out to chat with FM about squash, animal rights, and wikis.
1.
Fifteen Minutes (FM): You graduated from the College in 1975 and the stayed here to attend Harvard Law School (HLS). After being away for 30 years, how does it feel to return to your alma mater?
Cass R. Sunstein (CRS): It is exciting because it feels like home, and because the Law School is in fabulous shape. There are so many excellent students and faculty at the Law School and all throughout the University. I am looking forward to a chance to work with undergraduates as well.
2.
FM: What was your favorite class at Harvard?
CRS: I think my favorite class was Walter Jackson Bate’s [’39] famous course on Samuel Johnson. It was a magnificent class and inspirational. The class that most influenced me, though, was taught by Lloyd L. Weinreb, who later became a close friend of mine. His course introduced me to questions of justice and law. It wasn’t as theatrical as the Bate course, but it was extremely good and it has had a huge impact on my career.
3.
FM: You used to be quite the squash player, even playing for Harvard. Do you still play?
CRS: I do. However, for all its virtues, Chicago is a small squash town compared to Boston and New York. The most I played squash recently was last spring when I visited HLS. I played three or four times a week. Now I play either squash or tennis three or four times a week.
4.
FM: When did you know you wanted to go into law?
CRS: My senior year in college I was torn between graduate school in English and law school. I thought that law would have more opportunities, and you could take a lot of different paths if you went into law. So not knowing exactly what to do, I took the path that seemed interesting and useful and also kept options open.
5.
FM: Why constitutional law?
CRS: After law school, I worked for the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice, which focused on constitutional questions. I also clerked for Thurgood Marshall and Benjamin Kaplan. Originally, constitutional law was the glamor field of law teaching. I thought that it would be really great if I had a chance to get involved in an area that helped define the nation’s understanding of itself and possibly make a contribution. [...] It was endlessly exciting and an area in which if you figure something out you could help the system and that would be very rewarding.
6.
FM: What was clerking for Thurgood Marshall like?
CRS: It was an adventure. There was frequent drama because there were cases involving abortion, voting rights, the meaning of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and more. Marshall himself was larger than life—not self-important. He was full of amazing stories about presidents and civil rights leaders and great figures in American history—many of whom he actually knew, such as the Kennedys, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. Marshall was one of the world’s best storytellers and I would say that every day was a privilege to be able to interact with him.
7.
FM: If you could ask the Founding Fathers anything about the Constitution, what would you ask?
CRS: I’d ask them if they wanted their original understanding of their phrases should bind posterity—if they think their original interpretation should bind people 100 and 200 years later. That is one of the great questions of constitutional law and it would be very fascinating to have a discussion with founders about that question.
8.
FM: What is the most pressing legal issue facing the U.S. today?
CRS: One very pressing constitutional question is the authority of the president to act on his own. Under what circumstances can the president act unilaterally? We don’t know the answer to this. In terms of individual rights there are two obviously pressing questions—the question of discrimination on the basis of disability on the constitutional side and in the interpretation of Americans with Disabilities Act, and the question of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. In terms of the horizon, the rights of nonhuman animals seem to me a quite pressing issue. I’m walking my dog as we speak and he agrees with me.
9.
FM: You wrote a book about aggregating information entitled “Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge.” What are your thoughts on wikis?
CRS: I think wikis are a promising device by which to pool diverse information, so I am upbeat on wikis. I have worked some with the CIA on how to aggregate disparate information there. On the other hand, it is true that there are vandals and malcontents who can defeat the project, so we are still learning about the domains in which open wikis work and the ways in which you need active administrators to make sure that disruptive things don’t happen.
10.
FM: What is your favorite book that you have authored?
CRS: I have two favorites. One is called “Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict” from 1996 and the other is “Why Societies Need Dissent” from 2003. But I recently completed two books and I am under contract to do four more so I hope that I will like one of those six better.
11.
FM: Who are you pulling for in the presidential election?
CRS: My friend and former colleague Barack Obama. I am a long-time admirer of his. I have worked with him since he ran for the Senate on an occasional and informal basis. While I have high opinions of Senator Clinton and John McCain, Obama is my favorite of the three.
12.
FM: When you make the move to Cambridge in fall of 2008, you will be leading a new program on risk regulation. What is this program about?
CRS: The idea is that a lot of the problems the nation and world are now confronting are really about risk. Examples include natural disasters, infectious diseases, climate change, terrorism and nuclear proliferation. There are common questions that cut across these issues—how do humans actually think about risk? When do our thoughts go into the long term, that is, when do we consider the future? How can we get our legal institutions to focus on the long term rather than the short term? Those are very general questions. There are also some particular questions like, ‘Is there a way to reduce the number of Americans who die in the workplace?’ One of the reasons I’m thrilled to come to Harvard is because the Harvard community has so much energy and ability, and I hope we can tap a fraction of that to approach these problems. Having taught at the Law School I can say that the diversity and ability of HLS students is almost beyond belief and I know from what I read that the level of creativity from the undergraduates is phenomenal. So if you have a place for people who are interested and bring their creativity to bear, like this new program, it might be that we will have a giant wiki and we will see what comes of it.
13.
FM: You are currently the most cited law professor in the country. How much have you written and how do you have the time?
CRS: I’m too scared to see how much. I am sure I have written more than 12 books and pretty sure I have written more than 150 law review articles, but I don’t keep a count. I can write in crevices—meaning that if I have a half an hour between a class and meeting I can write in it. I don’t actually work very long hours, but I don’t need a lot of downtime during the day. So after a class if I don’t have a meeting I can write, and before class I can write, so I think I write more than I otherwise would because if I have free time I can write in it.
14.
FM: What did University of Chicago Law School Dean Saul Levmore mean in a Chicago Maroon article about your departure when he said that “there are a couple of personal reasons” for your decision to leave?
CRS: I have been at University of Chicago for over two decades. I love the place and I have no problems with my longtime home. When people leave one institution, often there is a sense of dissatisfaction with that institution and I don’t have that. In terms of a career, it can be good to go someplace different, though. I wanted to make it clear to my colleagues that the reason is personal, it’s not that I think there is anything lacking at the University of Chicago. Over the course of a career, being at two exciting institutions is better than being at one.
15.
FM: What are you working on right now?
CRS: I am most excited about a book called “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness,” which I co-authored with Richard Thaler. The basic idea of the book is that humans are amazing in many ways but cutting edge social science shows that we blunder and that our blunders make us poorer, less happy, and less healthy. The good news is that we are nudgeable through acts by private companies and governments. We can be nudged in directions that make us less poor, happier and healthier.