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.

On Learning from Others

Abstract: This response to Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz's critique of our earlier paper, "The Law of Other States," argues that although Rosenkranz has much of interest to say about Condorcet's influence on the founders, Condorcet's influence, or lack of influence, does not bear on the question of whether the Condorcet Jury Theorem provides a reason for courts to use foreign law and judicial decisions as relevant information for deciding cases.

Law and happiness

Abstract: Since the earliest days of philosophy, thinkers have debated the meaning of the term happiness and the nature of the good life. But it is only in recent years that the study of happiness - or 'hedonics' - has developed into a formal field of inquiry, cutting across a broad range of disciplines and offering insights into a variety of crucial questions of law and public policy. "Law and Happiness" brings together the best and most influential thinkers in the field to explore the question of what happiness is - and what factors can be demonstrated to increase or decrease it. Martha C. Nussbaum offers an account of the way that hedonics can productively be applied to psychology; Cass R. Sunstein considers the unexpected relationship between happiness and health problems; Matthew Adler and Eric A. Posner view hedonics through the lens of cost-benefit analysis; David A. Weisbach considers the relationship between happiness and taxation; Mark A. Cohen examines the role that crime - and fear of crime - can play in people's assessment of their happiness; and, other distinguished contributors take similarly innovative approaches to the topic of happiness. The result is a kaleidoscopic overview of this increasingly prominent field, offering surprising new perspectives and incisive analyses that will have profound implications for the law and our lives.

Of Artificial Intelligence and Legal Reasoning

Abstract: Can computers, or artificial intelligence, reason by analogy? This essay urges that they cannot, because they are unable to engage in the crucial task of identifying the normative principle that links or separates cases. Current claims, about the ability of artificial intelligence to reason analogically, rest on an inadequate picture of what legal reasoning actually is. For the most part, artificial intelligence now operates as a kind of advanced version of LEXIS, offering research assistance rather than analogical reasoning. But this is a claim about current technology, not about inevitable limitations of artificial intelligence; things might change in the future.

State Action is Always Present

Abstract: What is the place of social and economic guarantees in a democratic constitutional order? Do such guarantees place a special strain on the judiciary? Do they help poor people? What is the relationship between such guarantees and doctrines involving state action and the horizontal application of constitutional norms? Mark Tushnet does not attempt to answer these questions directly. But he casts new light on them by analyzing a number of cases in which courts have, or have not, taken their constitutions to alter background rules of property, contract, and tort. Tushnet contends that the rise of the activist state, understood as some form of social democracy, unsettles preexisting understandings of the relationship between constitutional norms and the private sector. In the classical liberal state, the constitution does not apply horizontally; there are no economic guarantees; and what counts as state action is relatively clear. But once the state assumes "affirmative obligations," constitutional norms might well be triggered, and the state's failure to alter the background rules of property and contract law might well raise serious constitutional problems. To borrow from Tushnet's summary of his complex account: In a "thin social democratic nation," such as Canada, courts are placed in a new and extremely difficult position, being forced either to "enforce obviously arbitrary lines between what they treat as state action and what they do not," or to work out "the set of entitlements people should have in a thicker social democracy."1 Much of what Tushnet says is highly illuminating, but I think that there are several gaps in his discussion. I emphasize two points here. First, the classical liberal state assumes affirmative obligations, and does so no less than the social democratic state. The obligations are different, but they are not less affirmative. The widespread neglect of this point, within the legal and political culture, has led to serious failures in analysis, and the failures are not innocuous. Second, state action is always present. IMAGE FORMULA5 The constitutional question, in any system that has a state action requirement, is not whether there is state action, but whether the relevant state action is unconstitutional. That is a hard question on the merits, but it is not a hard state action question. A thin social democracy may struggle with constitutional issues, but by virtue of its status as a thin social democracy, it ought not to have any special struggle with questions involving state action or horizontal effect. A nation that currently embraces social democracy might create, at the constitutional level, social and economic rights, or it might not. A nation that currently rejects social democracy might offer, at the constitutional level, social and economic rights, or it might not. The legal questions involve the merits. I now offer some details about these two points. 1. The so-called activist state is no more activist than what preceded it. Tushnet speaks of the "rise of the activist state," which he contrasts with the "classical liberal state." In his view, the "activist state ... is defined by the fact that it has affirmative obligations."2 This is the conventional understanding. But the conventional understanding is an unfortunate way of seeing the relevant categories. Most of the so-called negative rights require governmental assistance, not governmental abstention. Those rights cannot exist without public assistance. Consider, for example, the right to private property. As Bentham wrote, "Property and law are born together, and die together. Before laws were made there was no property; take away laws, and property ceases."3 In the state of nature, private property cannot exist, at least not in the way that it exists in a free society. In the state of nature, any property "rights" must be protected either through self-help-useful to the strong, not to the weak-or through social norms. …

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.