WASHINGTON — Harvard Law School professor Cass R. Sunstein, a widely admired intellectual and friend of President Obama, has spent years delving into the obscure issues of regulatory law and behavioral economics.
Though he is generally described as left of center, Sunstein's academic interests in regulation have led him to raise questions about the constitutionality of liberal favorites such as workplace safety laws and the Clean Air Act. He has embraced a controversial "senior death discount" that calculates the lives of younger people as having a greater value than those of the elderly.
Until recently such debates have taken place largely in the world of legal scholarship. But now that Obama has named Sunstein to serve as his regulatory czar, environmentalists and labor activists are digging into his voluminous body of work -- and wondering what policies might emanate from a man so dedicated to calculating the dollar value of every regulation.
Sunstein, who is married to another Obama friend, Samantha Power, reiterated recently his belief in "defending a strong regulatory state." Much of his academic and popular work is devoted to understanding human behavior and determining what will motivate people, corporations and nations to do the right thing.
But environmental activists say his published views on cost-benefit analysis are more aligned with what they would expect from a George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan appointee. The more a regulation stood to cost industry, the less likely those administrations were to impose it.
"If a Republican nominee had these views, the environmental community would be screaming for his scalp," said Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, a Washington-based advocacy group.
Instead, the response has been muted, as environmental and labor groups question the wisdom of criticizing the nominee of a popular president who has promised to support their agenda.
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs might sound like a remote bureaucratic outpost, but since the Reagan presidency it has influenced federal efforts to protect the public from unsafe food, dangerous chemicals, polluted air, climate change and workplace hazards.
That's because the office reviews any major regulatory idea that comes from an executive branch agency. Business lobbyists already are applauding Sunstein's nomination, hoping he might slow the march back to aggressive regulation under the new Democratic administration.
