Cass R. Sunstein

Bio: Cass R. Sunstein is an academic researcher from Harvard University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Supreme court & Constitution. The author has an hindex of 117, co-authored 787 publications receiving 57639 citations. Previous affiliations of Cass R. Sunstein include Brigham Young University & Indiana University.

Interest groups in American public law

Abstract: The bicentennial of the Constitution is approaching in a time of considerable dissatisfaction with the American scheme of governance. The dissatisfaction takes various forms, but many of the concerns have a common root in the problems produced by the existence of interest groups, or "factions," and their influence over the political process. The scheme is challenged on the grounds that it allows powerful private organizations to block necessary government action;1 that the lawmaking process has been transformed into a series of accommodations among competing elites;2 and that the rise of a large bureaucracy exercising broad discretionary power has undermined original constitutional goals by circumventing the safeguards of separation of powers and electoral accountability.3 The problem of faction has been a central concern of constitutional law and theory since the time of the American Revolution. Madison made control of factions the centerpiece of his defense of the proposed Constitution. His antifederalist opponents objected on the ground that his solution was a false one, addressing only a symptom of the underlying problem. This de-

Cost-Benefit Analysis Without Analyzing Costs of Benefits: Reasonable Accommodation, Balancing, and Stigmatic Harms

Abstract: Is an accommodation reasonable, under the Americans with Disabilities Act, if and only if the benefits are roughly proportional to the costs? How should benefits and costs be assessed? Should courts asks about how much disabled employees are willing to pay to obtain the accommodation, or instead how much they would have to be paid not to have the accommodation? How should stigmatic or expressive harms be valued? This essay, written for a symposium on the work of Judge Richard A. Posner, engages these questions in a discussion of an important opinion in which Judge Posner denied accommodations involving the lowering of a sink in a kitchenette and a request for telecommuting. The problem with the analysis in that opinion is that it does not seriously analyze either costs or benefits. A general lesson is that while cost-benefit balancing can helpfully discipline unreliable intuitions about the effects of requested accommodations, it can also incorporate those intuitions. Another lesson is that stigmatic harms and daily humiliations deserve serious attention as part of the inquiry into which accommodations are reasonable, and that the removal of those harms and humiliations can create real benefits. Adequate cost-benefit analyses must attempt to measure and include those benefits.

Do People Want Optimal Deterrence

Abstract: This paper tests the question whether people favor optimal deterrence policies. More particularly, it asks whether people are willing to increase penalties when the probability of detection is low, or to decrease penalties when the probability of detection is high. Two experiments are reported, suggesting that people do not spontaneously think in terms of optimal deterrence, and that people would have objections to policies based on the goal of optimal deterrence. Institutional implications are briefly discussed.

How people decide what they want to know

Abstract: Immense amounts of information are now accessible to people, including information that bears on their past, present and future. An important research challenge is to determine how people decide to seek or avoid information. Here we propose a framework of information-seeking that aims to integrate the diverse motives that drive information-seeking and its avoidance. Our framework rests on the idea that information can alter people's action, affect and cognition in both positive and negative ways. The suggestion is that people assess these influences and integrate them into a calculation of the value of information that leads to information-seeking or avoidance. The theory offers a framework for characterizing and quantifying individual differences in information-seeking, which we hypothesize may also be diagnostic of mental health. We consider biases that can lead to both insufficient and excessive information-seeking. We also discuss how the framework can help government agencies to assess the welfare effects of mandatory information disclosure.

Academic Fads and Fashions (with Special Reference to Law)

Abstract: Like everyone else, academics are susceptible to informational and reputational signals Sometimes academics lack confidence in their methods and beliefs, and they pay a great deal of attention to the methods and beliefs of others The academic study of law is particularly subject to cascade effects, as people follow signals that they participate in amplifying Some of these effects run their course quickly, whereas others last a long time Leaders can play a special role in starting and stopping cascades; external shocks play a special role in the academic study of law; sometimes like-minded people within academia move one another to extremes This informal essay, the Foreword to the forthcoming annual book review issue of the Michigan Law Review, discusses these points in a tentative and impressionistic way, with brief comparisons to other fields

Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning

Abstract: Probability Distributions.- Linear Models for Regression.- Linear Models for Classification.- Neural Networks.- Kernel Methods.- Sparse Kernel Machines.- Graphical Models.- Mixture Models and EM.- Approximate Inference.- Sampling Methods.- Continuous Latent Variables.- Sequential Data.- Combining Models.

The behaviour change wheel: a new method for characterising and designing behaviour change interventions.

Abstract: Improving the design and implementation of evidence-based practice depends on successful behaviour change interventions. This requires an appropriate method for characterising interventions and linking them to an analysis of the targeted behaviour. There exists a plethora of frameworks of behaviour change interventions, but it is not clear how well they serve this purpose. This paper evaluates these frameworks, and develops and evaluates a new framework aimed at overcoming their limitations. A systematic search of electronic databases and consultation with behaviour change experts were used to identify frameworks of behaviour change interventions. These were evaluated according to three criteria: comprehensiveness, coherence, and a clear link to an overarching model of behaviour. A new framework was developed to meet these criteria. The reliability with which it could be applied was examined in two domains of behaviour change: tobacco control and obesity. Nineteen frameworks were identified covering nine intervention functions and seven policy categories that could enable those interventions. None of the frameworks reviewed covered the full range of intervention functions or policies, and only a minority met the criteria of coherence or linkage to a model of behaviour. At the centre of a proposed new framework is a 'behaviour system' involving three essential conditions: capability, opportunity, and motivation (what we term the 'COM-B system'). This forms the hub of a 'behaviour change wheel' (BCW) around which are positioned the nine intervention functions aimed at addressing deficits in one or more of these conditions; around this are placed seven categories of policy that could enable those interventions to occur. The BCW was used reliably to characterise interventions within the English Department of Health's 2010 tobacco control strategy and the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence's guidance on reducing obesity. Interventions and policies to change behaviour can be usefully characterised by means of a BCW comprising: a 'behaviour system' at the hub, encircled by intervention functions and then by policy categories. Research is needed to establish how far the BCW can lead to more efficient design of effective interventions.

International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

Abstract: Norms have never been absent from the study of international politics, but the sweeping “ideational turn” in the 1980s and 1990s brought them back as a central theoretical concern in the field. Much theorizing about norms has focused on how they create social structure, standards of appropriateness, and stability in international politics. Recent empirical research on norms, in contrast, has examined their role in creating political change, but change processes have been less well-theorized. We induce from this research a variety of theoretical arguments and testable hypotheses about the role of norms in political change. We argue that norms evolve in a three-stage “life cycle” of emergence, “norm cascades,” and internalization, and that each stage is governed by different motives, mechanisms, and behavioral logics. We also highlight the rational and strategic nature of many social construction processes and argue that theoretical progress will only be made by placing attention on the connections between norms and rationality rather than by opposing the two.

Risk as Feelings

Abstract: Virtually all current theories of choice under risk or uncertainty are cognitive and consequentialist. They assume that people assess the desirability and likelihood of possible outcomes of choice alternatives and integrate this information through some type of expectation-based calculus to arrive at decision. The authors propose an alternative theoretical perspective, the risk-as-feelings hypothesis, that highlights the role of affect experienced at the moment of decision making. Drawing on research from clinical, physiological, and other subfield of psychology, they show that emotional reactions to risky situations often drive behavior. The risk-as-feelings hypothesis is shown to explain a wide range of phenomena that have resisted interpretation in cognitive-consequentialist terms.

A perspective on judgment and choice: Mapping bounded rationality.

Abstract: Early studies of intuitive judgment and decision making conducted with the late Amos Tversky are reviewed in the context of two related concepts: an analysis of accessibility, the ease with which thoughts come to mind; a distinction between effortless intuition and deliberate reasoning. Intuitive thoughts, like percepts, are highly accessible. Determinants and consequences of accessibility help explain the central results of prospect theory, framing effects, the heuristic process of attribute substitution, and the characteristic biases that result from the substitution of nonextensional for extensional attributes. Variations in the accessibility of rules explain the occasional corrections of intuitive judgments. The study of biases is compatible with a view of intuitive thinking and decision making as generally skilled and successful.