Cass Sunstein

Cass R. Sunstein (born 1954) is an American legal scholar and behavioral economist whose work on libertarian paternalism and choice architecture helped translate the findings of behavioral economics into public policy frameworks. As Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under President Obama, Sunstein oversaw the implementation of nudge-based policies in domains ranging from retirement savings to environmental regulation. His academic work spans constitutional law, administrative law, and behavioral economics — a triangulation that reflects his central claim: that legal and institutional design must account for the actual cognitive architecture of the agents it governs.

Sunstein's collaboration with Richard Thaler on Nudge (2008) made the case for libertarian