Cass R. Sunstein

"What happens to democracy and free speech if people use the Internet to create echo chambers--to listen and speak only to the like-minded? What is the democratic benefit of the Internet's unlimited choices if citizens narrowly limit the information they receive, creating ever-smaller niches and fragmenting the shared public conversation on which democracy depends? Cass Sunstein first asked these questions before 9/11, in Republic.com, and they have become even more urgent in the years since. Now, in Republic.com 2.0, Sunstein thoroughly rethinks the critical relationship between democracy and the Internet in a world where partisan Web logs have emerged as a significant force in politics and where cyber-jihadists have embraced the Internet to thwart democracy and spread violence. Emphasizing the value of unplanned, unchosen encounters, the original Republic.com provoked a strong reaction from cyber-optimists. In Republic.com 2.0 Sunstein answers the critics and expands his argument to take account of new developments, including the blogosphere, and fresh evidence about how people are using the Internet. He demonstrates that the real question is how to avoid "information cocoons" and to ensure that the unrestricted choices made possible by technology do not undermine democracy. Sunstein also proposes new remedies and reforms--focusing far less on what government should do, and much more on what consumers and producers should do--to help democracy avoid the perils, and realize the promise, of the Internet." --Publisher desscription.

Using FDR's 1944 State of the Union Address as a starting point, the author delves deeply into the revolutionary mind that penned this remarkable declaration of economic rights and illuminates the demise of this ambitious program for reform in the wake of the president's death.

"In this book, Cass R. Sunstein shows that organizations and nations are far more likely to prosper if they welcome dissent and promote openness. Attacking "political correctness" in all forms, Sunstein demonstrates that corporations, legislatures, even presidents are likely to blunder if they do not cultivate a culture of candor and disclosure. He shows that unjustified extremism, including violence and terrorism, often results from failure to tolerate dissenting views. The tragedy is that blunders and cruelties could be avoided if people spoke out."--Jacket.

We are in the midst of a worldwide debate over whether there should be "more" or "less" government. As enthusiasm for free markets mounts - in both former Communist nations and in Western countries such as England and the United States - is it productive to attempt to solve problems through this "more/less" dichotomy? Written by one of the preeminent voices in the legal/political arena today, this ground-breaking book moves beyond the "more/less" question by presenting a new conception of the relationship between free markets and social justice. Instead of asking whether there should be more or less regulation, Cass R. Sunstein asks readers to consider what kinds of regulations promote human well-being in different contexts. He develops seven basic themes, involving the myth of laissez-faire, the importance of fair distribution, the puzzle of human rationality, the diversity of human goods, the role of social norms in forming people's preferences, the contextual character of choice, and the effects of law on human desires. As the latest word from an internationally renowned writer, Free Markets and Social Justice suggests a new way of understanding the role of the economic marketplace in a democratic society.

Sunstein focus the free-market approach to free-speech regulation with a Madisonian emphasis on discourse in a deliberative democracy. The laissez-faire framework for regulation are replaced by a two-tier framework that slots political, deliberative speech in the first tier and other forms of protected speech in the second tier; most currently out-of-bounds speech (libel, unlicensed medical speech, and so on) remain out of bounds. First-tier speech regulations require much more stringent justifications than do second-tier speech regulations.

American constitutional law is at a crossroads. In a major new interpretation of the Constitution, Cass Sunstein offers a clear account of our present dilemmas and shows where we might go from here. As it is currently interpreted, the Constitution is partial, Sunstein asserts. It is, first of all, biased. Contemporary constitutional law treats the status quo as neutral and just, and any departure as necessarily partisan. But when the status quo is neither neutral nor just, Sunstein argues, reasoning of this sort produces injustice. The Constitution is also partial in another sense: its meaning has come to be identified solely with the decisions of the Supreme Court. This was not always the case, as Sunstein demonstrates; nor was it the intention of the country's founders. Instead, the Constitution often served as a catalyst for public deliberation about its general terms and aspirations - and Sunstein makes a strong case for reviving this broader understanding of the Constitution's role . In light of this analysis, Sunstein proposes solutions to some of the most hotly disputed issues of our time, including affirmative action, sex discrimination, pornography, "hate speech," and government funding of religious schools and the arts. In an especially striking argument, he claims that the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment - not the right to privacy - protects a woman's right to choose abortion. Sunstein connects these and other debates to the Constitution's historic commitment to public deliberation among political equals - and in doing so, he reconceives many of our most basic constitutional rights, such as free speech and equality under law. He urges that public deliberation about the meaning of the Constitution in turn be freed from a principle of neutrality based on the status quo. His work points to a historically sound but fundamentally new understanding of the American constitutional process as an exercise in deliberative democracy.

"Cass Sunstein considers actual and imaginable arguments for a president's removal, explaining why some cases are easy and others hard, why some arguments for impeachment are judicious and others not. In direct and approachable terms, he dispels the fog surrounding impeachment so that all Americans may use their ultimate civic authority wisely"--

"Americans are engaged in an intense debate about their judicial branch of government. Some people worry about "activist" judges who are "legislating from the bench," making an end run around electoral democracy, while others feel that the judiciary is properly protecting fundamental rights. How do the political leanings of judges affect their activity on the bench? To put it another way, Are Judges Political? And to what degree? This book produces real answers by looking at what judges actually do, injecting fact and analysis into a discussion that is all too often overwhelmed by sound bites and ideological howling." "Legal analyst Cass R. Sunstein, management scholar David Schkade, attorney Lisa Ellman, and judicial clerk Andres Sawicki examine thousands of judicial votes to analyze the influence of ideology on judicial decisions.^ Focusing principally on the federal courts of appeal, where judgments are made by a panel of three politically appointed judges, the authors scrutinize decisions on some of the most controversial issues in American law and politics. They look at controversial, sometimes polarizing issues - abortion, affirmative action, campaign finance regulation, disability discrimination, environmental protection, and gay rights.^ They focus on these key questions: Do judges appointed by Republican presidents consistently vote differently from their colleagues who were appointed by a Democrat? When are those differences most stark and predictable? And to what degree are judicial votes affected by the ideological leanings of other judges on the same panel? For example, do judges who find themselves a minority of one behave differently than those who hold either a 2-1 or 3-0 edge?" "Are Judges Political? brings precision to an impassioned but often impressionistic discussion by quantifying how ideology affects legal judgments. Interestingly, even in the most controversial cases, Republican and Democratic appointees agree more than they disagree. When they do disagree, however, the analysis of who votes how (and under what circumstances) can be quite illuminating and tells us a great deal about human nature as well as politics and justice in America.^ Are Judges Political? finds that judges do adhere to the law, but where the law is not plain, political convictions clearly play a role. And when like-minded judges sit together, they may well go to extremes."--BOOK JACKET.