If you have an architecture of control, let's say, where you select in advance everything that's going to affect your life, then you're going to live in a very small world that will have an echo chamber feature... Pandora, which I love, actually feeds into that.
Cass Sunstein
Today, we are announcing that agencies are releasing their final regulatory reform plans, including hundreds of initiatives that will reduce costs, simplify the system, and eliminate redundancy and inconsistency.
Catholicism is a wide tent in terms of political and legal positions. We could have nine Catholics on the Supreme Court and a great deal of diversity toward the law.
On some issues, Republicans and Democrats disagree so sharply that compromise is nearly impossible. Republicans are not going to support a cap-and-trade program to limit greenhouse gases, and Democrats won't support a 1,000-mile wall on the border with Mexico.
If interviewers are prejudiced against women or Hispanics, for example, a face-to-face interview will predictably result in discrimination. Reliance on tests, or on actual or past performance, can promote equality.
If you look at a great city, one of its amazing features is that you're going to find all sorts of things that you might not specifically have chosen in advance. And they will change your day. Maybe your month. Maybe your whole life.
In psychology and behavioral economics, people have shown that if you just describe options in a certain way, or make some features of a situation salient, you can get people to do and even see what you want. You don't have to be a Jedi to manipulate people's attention.
Democrats pride themselves on their commitment to science. Citing climate change, they contend that they are the party of truth, while Republicans are 'denialists.' But with respect to genetically modified organisms, many Democrats seem indifferent to science, and to be practicing a denialism of their own - perhaps more so than Republicans.
I love Richard Thaler's 'Quasi Rational Economics.' A collection of some of his most interesting and inventive essays, the real foundation of behavioral economics.
Donald Trump has taken a battering ram to longstanding political norms - the unwritten conventions that make governance possible. But even before he decided to run for president, those norms were under assault.
Donald Trump promises to impose, soon after his inauguration, a new requirement on federal agencies: If they want to issue a new regulation, they have to rescind two regulations that are now on the books. The idea of 'one in, two out' has rhetorical appeal, but it's going to be extremely hard to pull off.
Television is, in many respects, a passive medium: people receive information without really exchanging ideas with others. By contrast, the Internet can be an active medium, allowing individuals to use e-mail, discussion groups, and even Web sites to engage with one another.
When it comes to discrimination, Americans pride ourselves on how far we've come. Racial segregation is history. Explicit sex discrimination is banned. Same-sex marriage is the law of the land. But amidst all the progress, the male-female wage gap persists, and it's big.
Rules are not improved by sloganeering, fact-free letter-writing campaigns, or special pleading from interest groups.
I strongly believe that the Second Amendment creates an individual right to possess and use guns for purposes of both hunting and self-defense.
When government programs fail, it is often because public officials are clueless about how human beings think and act.
A few weeks ago, I was at the gym, talking to a friend about politics. Overhearing the conversation, a young man - maybe 25 years old - interrupted to say, 'Obama? He hasn't done a single thing!'
The habit I've developed is to write in any free half hour I might find.
I confess I'm a big fan of Taylor Swift.
I think it's a very firm part of human nature that if you surround yourself with like-minded people, you'll end up thinking more extreme versions of what you thought before.
We live in a period in which political disagreements are routinely handed over to the courts. Whenever you think that the president is wrong, you might well cry out that he has violated the Constitution - and ask federal judges to rule accordingly.
In 'The Force Awakens,' women as well as men are in positions of authority. And you don't have to work hard to do that - it's not a statement, it's the world.
It can be easy and tempting, especially during a presidential campaign, to listen only to opinions that mirror and fortify one's own. That's not ideal, because it eliminates learning and makes it impossible for people to understand what they dismiss as 'the other side.'
I am a professional squash player, and I recently played badly - but as well as I could - in a professional squash tournament. A professional squash player might sound like someone who is in a food-tasting group, but it is a racquet sport.
There is no proportional representation requirement in the Equal Protection Clause.
They call soccer the beautiful game, but if I had to identify just one sport to show members of some alien species what the human race is all about, I'd nominate squash.
Wherever people find themselves in trouble, or at some kind of crossroads, the series proclaims you are free to choose. That's the deepest lesson of 'Star Wars.'
What's disgusting about genetic modification of food? I speculate that many people have an immediate, intuitive sense that what's healthy is what's 'natural,' and that efforts to tamper with nature will inevitably unleash serious risks - so-called Frankenfoods. The problem with that speculation is that it's flat-out wrong.
If you like dark movies or light movies, 'The Empire Strikes Back' is one of the great movies of all time. It's probably the greatest movie of all time. 'A New Hope' is a superb movie. It's probably the second-greatest movie of all time, but 'The Empire Strikes Back' is better.
Republicans are right to express concern about excessive regulation, and they can do a lot to reduce it, above all by scrutinizing rules on the books and by putting all new proposals through a cost-benefit filter. There's room for plenty of creativity here.
No one should take away people's rights. But with respect to 'the right to arm ourselves,' we have lost sight of our own history.
I think President Obama has been an extraordinarily successful president, and that this period will record that with a bunch of exclamation points. But obviously, not everybody thinks that.
Voters like to fall in love with presidential candidates, at least a little bit.
The only answer to the question 'Which is the worst of the 'Star Wars' movies?' is, there is no worst 'Star Wars' movie. There - one might be the least amazing and fantastic, but there's none that is the worst of the 'Star Wars' movies.
For consumers, the lesson is simple: Genetically modified foods are safe to eat.
The process of getting regulations right is described publicly as far more political than in fact it is. It's essentially a legal and technical enterprise.
Antonin Scalia was witty, warm, funny, and full of life. He was not only one of the most important justices in the nation's history; he was also among the greatest.
For any child, boy or girl, a father is both Jedi and Sith: Obi-Wan Kenobi - gentle and calming and good - and Vader, fierce and terrifying.
If the air quality is terrible in Los Angeles, if a particular university is unusually expensive, if crime is on the rise in Dallas, or if a company has a lot of recalled toys, transparency can spur change. Whenever public or private institutions have to answer to the public, their performance is likely to improve.
By their innocence and goodness, by their boundless capacity for forgiveness, and by the sheer power of their faith and hope, children redeem their parents, bringing out their best selves.
There's a big difference between the role of an academic and the role of someone in government. That's a cliche, but in academic life if you say things that are common sense and people nod their heads, it's not very useful. You're not adding anything.
It's one thing to make financial aid available to students so they can attend college. It's another thing to design forms that students can actually fill out.
I am a huge Red Sox fan.
The U.S. is blessed with tremendously creative and imaginative law students at places like Chicago, Harvard, Columbia and Yale.
There are some lawyers who think of themselves as basically instruments of whoever their clients are, and they pride themselves on their professional craft.
When it imposes expensive regulatory mandates on the private sector, Congress often acts on the basis of interest-group pressures, anecdotes, and the emotions of the moment. The executive branch is hardly perfect, but it is far less likely to do that.
The 'cash for clunkers' program was a big success in part because it gave people the sense that the economy was moving.
After a two-term presidency, many young voters seem to want someone who is radically different from, even the opposite of, the commander in chief to whom they have become accustomed. After all, a two-term president will have led their nation for a significant percentage of their lives. That's boring. Isn't it time for a transformation?
When President Barack Obama is trying to persuade Americans not to do something, he has a go-to line: 'That's not who we are.' Whether the issue involves discrimination, immigration, torture, criminal violence or health care, he invokes the nation's very identity.
Here's a more controversial idea: In general, Democrats and progressives ought to allow Trump considerable room to choose his own employees - far more room than Republicans allowed during the Obama administration. Tit-for-tat is a dangerous game.
