Meet Obama's Buddy, Cass Sunstein: The Next White House Counsel?

A former colleague of Obama's at the University of Chicago, Cass Sunstein is a widely published and deeply respected constitutional scholar and legal theorist. He is perhaps best known for his book 'Republic.com' about the likely impacts of the modern communications and information technology on the democratic process.

Professor Sunstein's scholarship on our legal and political systems is a profound and provocative critique with much more popular appeal and import than most legal scholars manage.

Learn more about this key figure on Obama's team after the click...

Sunstein's work evinces a great deal of reasoned confidence in the process of democracy as the best means available for making wise decisions collectively. In 'Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge' and 'Why Societies Need Dissent' he explores with great care the most pressing problems and greatest opportunities for our society to harness the power of open systems to solve our social and economic problems.

I recently learned that Obama consulted with Lawrence Lessig when face with issues of intellectual property law and open systems in his Senatorial duties. That he would be open to Lessig's contrarian (and, in my view, entirely correct) view of these issues also speaks quite highly of his independence of mind and openness to strong contrary views.

Sunstein also tackles the most basic problems of democratic constitutionalism in his work 'Designing Democracy: What Constitutions Do'. He demonstrates a great reverence for our constitution and a laudable willingness to look at how we can do democracy even better.

Sunstein takes on the issues of market economics and criticizes the idea of laissez-faire economics in his 'Free Markets and Social Justice'. He argues compellingly that as free markets are social constructs, markets ought to be subordinate to the claims of social and economic justice.

Finally, though not exhaustive of his enormous and well-respected academic output, is his very interesting book 'The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever', which argues for a popular constitutional moment during the FDR years establishing new constitutional norms. The second bill of rights Sunstein refers to is rooted in FDR's first State of the Union address in which he redefined security to include economic justice (jobs, healthcare, social security). His is not the first book to suggest such a thing. Historians and constitutional scholars have long looked at deep popular movements as normative constitutional moments. The most widely known such work, perhaps, is George Fletcher's highly influential work "Our Secret Constitution: How Lincoln Redefined American Democracy".

The fact that as widely-respected a legal scholar as Sunstein is supporting Obama, and is himself impressed by Obama's legal acumen, speaks volumes about Obama as a student of the American legal and political tradition, and the kind of leader he would be in the Presidency.

A conversation with Prof. Sunstein (note: sound level is fairly low):

An interesting lecture on the Second Amendment by Sunstein:

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Comments

[Bill Astle]

As long as you're getting into the predictions game here's mine. Sam Nunn will be the Dem Vice President nominee no matter who the the candidate is for President.