Former Regulatory Chief Cuts Loose

Now that he’s safe back in academia, Cass Sunstein, the former Obama administration regulatory chief, can afford to come off as more partisan in his prolific writings.

In a pre-election essay in the Nov. 8 issue of The New York Review of Books, the newly installed Harvard law professor observed that the results of this month’s election would determine the fate of “many of the biggest battles of the day -- over health care reform, financial reform, environmental protection, workplace safety, civil rights.”

That’s in part because disputes over many of the regulations and rules put forward by federal agencies and reviewed by Sunstein’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs will be “settled in court by lower-court judges in rulings that will get little public attention.”

And of course, Republican judicial appointees differ dramatically from Democratic ones, he added, “and along predictable partisan lines.” On election night, the future of Sunstein’s regulatory legacy brightened.