[Eugene Volokh, January 8, 2009 at 12:13pm] Trackbacks
Volokh Conspiracy Guest-Blogger Nominated to High Government Office:

Well, OK, his guest-blogging isn't what he's famous for, but allow me to be parochial here, and point to Cass Sunstein's posts from last year. I agree with Todd Zywicki that Sunstein is an excellent choice. Sunstein is brilliant, thoughtful, and ideologically probably as good as libertarianish/conservativish people like me can hope for from the new administration.

Related Posts (on one page):

  1. "Why We Should Welcome Cass Sunstein,"
  2. Why the Sunstein Pick is Good For Legal Academics:
  3. Sunstein as Regulatory Czar:
  4. Volokh Conspiracy Guest-Blogger Nominated to High Government Office:
  5. Sunstein to Head OIRA:
krs:
He's obviously brilliant, but has he ever actually done anything with actual consequences?
1.8.2009 12:17pm
ohnonothim! (mail):
Barf
1.8.2009 12:40pm
Cornellian (mail):
He's obviously brilliant, but has he ever actually done anything with actual consequences?

Precisely my concern with putting an academic, especially a legal academic,
in charge of managing anything.
1.8.2009 1:00pm
GregC (mail):
On the management front, it's worth noting that OIRA has a fairly small staff for an agency of its broad scope -- around 50 or so, with good mid-level managers. So, while some appear to have concerns that Sunstein may make a less than stellar administrator, that's not quite as big a risk with OIRA as it would be with many other federal agencies.
1.8.2009 2:48pm
Brian Garst (www):
Someone with Sunstein's ideas in any position of power or influence is a frightening prospect. I have enough parents.
1.8.2009 4:11pm
RickC (mail):
Are you guys kidding? Sunstein is a "statist" par excellence. Have you read "Nudge" or "The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More than Ever" or "The Cost of Rights". The first offers paternalistic guidance in our decision making because we lowly minions can't make rational decisions without guidance. The second flatly argues for a total welfare state, as Tom Palmer at Cato points out, through a "re-imagining of the Constitution". In the third, he suggests that all rights are really grants from the state, as opposed to against and prior to the state per the Declaration and Constitution. Wow. Only darkness ahead.
1.8.2009 8:48pm
Fedya (www):
Well, OK, his guest-blogging isn't what he's famous for, but allow me to be parochial here, and point to Cass Sunstein's posts from last year.


And all this time I thought Cass was a woman! (I was obviously thinking along the lines of Cass Elliot.)

[slinks sheepishly away]
1.8.2009 9:32pm
Eugene Volokh (www):
Folks: Obama was elected. He's not going to appoint a libertarian. As between a Sunstein, who appreciates the limits of regulation and the values of a free-market -- though of course being much more pro-government-intervention than I am, given that he's an Obama appointee -- and the many on the Left who don't have that appreciation, I much prefer Sunstein. That I'd have preferred stauncher free-marketers of the sort that Republicans might appoint (though even the Republicans aren't as pro-free-market as I'd like) strikes me as moot given that the Republicans lost.
1.9.2009 12:51am

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