Carnegie Council

Cass R. Sunstein is a professor in the department of political science and at the law school at the University of Chicago, where he specializes in administrative and constitutional law. 

He graduated in 1975 from Harvard College and in 1978 from Harvard Law School magna cum laude. After graduation, he clerked for Justice Benjamin Kaplan of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court. Before joining the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School and the department of political science, he worked as an attorney-advisor in the Office of the Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Sunstein has testified before congressional committees on many subjects, and has been involved in constitution-making and law reform activities in a number of nations, including Ukraine, Poland, China, South Africa, and Russia. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he has been Samuel Rubin Visiting Professor of Law at Columbia, visiting professor of law at Harvard, vice-chair of the ABA Committee on Separation of Powers and Governmental Organizations, chair of the Administrative Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools, a member of the ABA Committee on the future of the FTC, and a member of the President's Advisory Committee on the Public Service Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters.

Sunstein is author of many articles and a number of books, including After the Rights Revolution: Reconceiving the Regulatory State (1990); The Partial Constitution (1993); Designing Democracy: What Constitutions Do (2001); Republic.com (2001); The Cost-Benefit State (2002); Punitive Damages: How Juries Decide (2002); Why Societies Need Dissent (2003); The Second Bill of Rights (2004);  Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle (2005); and Republic 2.0 (2007).

Resources by this Author:

• Republic.com 2.0
• Republic.com 2.0
• Why Societies Need Dissent