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Cass Sunstein

Cass R. Sunstein is the Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago Law School and the author of more than a dozen books, including After the Rights Revolution, Designing Democracy and most recently, The Cost-Benefit State.

Recent Articles

Racism and Race-Conscious Remedies

Cass SunsteinDec 04, 2000

In my essay in the 1982 Supreme Court review, to which Professor Tollett refers, I did not say that the original purpose of the Reconstruction Amendments is probably no longer worth taking seriously. Instead, I said that the notion that the amendments are limited to race, and do not also apply elsewhere, is probably no longer worth taking seriously. The difference is not technical; these are entirely different propositions.

To say that the equal protection clause covers not simply race discrimination but also (for example) sex discrimination is to say something that fits with its broad text. It is not at all to deny that the fundamental purpose of the clause is to counteract the subordination of blacks. On this point, Professor Tollett and I are in basic agreement.

Remaking Regulation

Cass SunsteinDec 04, 2000

The sudden collapse of communism has produced a nearly worldwide outburst of enthusiasm for private property; free markets, and electoral democracy. In the United States, and perhaps in the West as a whole, the collapse has also led to an understandable but disquieting degree of self-congratulation and complacency. Understandable, and in a way even justified, because the events of the past year have dispelled any lingering doubts about the risks of collectivism to both liberty and prosperity; disquieting, because the failure of communism is hardly a reason for unquestioning satisfaction with all our own institutions, let alone for a belief in laissez faire.

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