President-elect Barack Obama has tapped legal scholar Cass Sunstein as his administration's regulatory czar, a Democratic source said Friday.
Obama hired the Harvard law professor to run the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the administration's central approver of rules that has say over environmental policy, workplace safety issues and federal health care policies. All major agencies' rules will pass across Sunstein's desk, giving him great influence in the new administration.
His appointment was disclosed by a Democratic source who spoke on the condition of anonymnity to discuss personnel decisions.
Sunstein's office would be the main place Obama's new administration would look to reverse executive orders issued by President George W. Bush, who leaves office Tuesday. Obama aides and advisers have their eyes on Bush's policies on stem cell research and reproductive rights, but advisers have combed Bush's record and found more than 200 rules they would like to see reversed. AP
Here is what
Sunstein wrote about Obama in March:
Transparency and accountability matter greatly to him; they are a defining feature of his proposals. With respect to the mortgage crisis, credit cards and the broader debate over credit markets, Obama rejects heavy-handed regulation and insists on disclosure above all so consumers will know exactly what they are getting.
Expect transparency to be a central theme in any Obama administration, as a check on government and the private sector alike. It is highly revealing that Obama worked with Republican (and arch-conservative) Tom Coburn of Oklahoma to produce legislation creating a publicly searchable database of all federal spending.
Sunstein is married to Samantha Power, foreign policy adviser and author:
Sunstein previously taught at the University of Chicago, where Obama also taught law part time.
He is married to Samantha Power, a Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign policy adviser who was forced to resign from the campaign when she called Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was then an Obama rival, "a monster." Power has since rejoined Obama's circle, helping his transition team assess the State Department that Clinton would lead as secretary.
Sunstein earned two degrees from Harvard and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He also advised constitution writers in Poland, South Africa and Russia. AP
Here is
his bio from the University of Chicago Law School:
Cass R. Sunstein is currently the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Mr. Sunstein graduated in 1975 from Harvard College and in 1978 from Harvard Law School magna cum laude. After graduation, he clerked for Justice Benjamin Kaplan of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court, and then he worked as an attorney-advisor in the Office of the Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice. He was a faculty member at the Law School from 1981 to 2008.
Mr. Sunstein has testified before congressional committees on many subjects, and he has been involved in constitution-making and law reform activities in a number of nations, including Ukraine, Poland, China, South Africa, and Russia. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Mr. Sunstein has been Samuel Rubin Visiting Professor of Law at Columbia, visiting professor of law at Harvard, vice-chair of the ABA Committee on Separation of Powers and Governmental Organizations, chair of the Administrative Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools, a member of the ABA Committee on the future of the FTC, and a member of the President's Advisory Committee on the Public Service Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters.
Mr. Sunstein is author of many articles and a number of books, including Republic.com (2001), Risk and Reason (2002), Why Societies Need Dissent (2003), The Second Bill of Rights (2004), Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle (2005), Worst-Case Scenarios (2001), and Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (with Richard H. Thaler, 2008). He is now working on various projects involving the relationship between law and human behavior.
