Cass R. Sunstein

“The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.” — US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Schenck v. US, 1919 A lot of people are falsely shouting fire these days, and causing panics. Should they be…

Suppose we could adopt, soon or right now, a strategy that would substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions while costing people very little, or possibly even nothing? Not only that, it would not require bans or mandates, new regulations or carbon taxes. Consumers would retain freedom of choice…

Misinformation and fake news are now threatening public health and endangering democracy itself. What might help contain the problem? Part of the answer lies in a very old remedy: the law of defamation. To see how this might work, consider the situation of Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems,…

The current confusion and anxiety surrounding presidential vote-counting, with different states using different rules and procedures, make it natural to wonder: Wouldn’t it have been better to let the federal government oversee the process? The framers of the US Constitution didn’t think so, for…

It’s Election Day, and there are already lawsuits challenging votes and voting procedures. Some of them are invoking the Supreme Court’s 2000 decision in Bush v. Gore, which effectively handed that year’s presidential election to George W. Bush. We should expect a lot more to come. Bush v. Gore…

“The Untouchables,” the 1987 movie about gangsters and cops in Prohibition-era Chicago, was defined by these lines, spoken by police officer Jim Malone (played by Sean Connery) to his protégé, Eliot Ness (played by Kevin Costner): He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the…

The year: 1964. The location: the Oval Office. President Lyndon Johnson, an improbable advocate for civil rights, was meeting with Governor George Wallace, an implacable foe of civil rights. Wallace had requested the meeting. The specific topic was voting rights and the ongoing demonstrations on…

New Zealand’s Labour coalition government has done something that could prove historic. Led by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, it has produced the world’s first “well-being” budget, focused explicitly on a single goal: using its limited funds to promote the well-being of its citizens. Among…

With respect to free speech, people seem increasingly drawn to a simple narrative. Those on the left used to like freedom of speech — but now, not so much. Those on the right used not to like free speech — but now they’re all in. The narrative is mostly wrong. Actually, it’s a mess. To see why,…