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Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein qoutes.. Pay attention.
huskergun:
If you don't read these things and understand the implications then some day you will be scratching your head wondering where your rights went.
If you don't believe the things below then do your own research. Prove that they are wrong....good luck.
People like this were the reason for the first revolution by true patriots.
I believe that the next generation of true patriots will soon show their resolve again. I'll be with them.
Rich
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. "
Thomas Jefferson
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Cass Sunstein Quotes
Second Amendment
Consider the view that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to own guns.
The view is respectable, but it may be wrong, and prominent specialists reject it on
various grounds. As late as 1980, it would have been preposterous to argue that the
Second Amendment creates an individual right to own guns, and no federal court
invalidated a gun control restriction on Second Amendment grounds until 2007. Yet
countless Americans politicians, in recent years, have acknowledged that they respect the
individual right to bear arms, at least in general terms. Their views are a product of the
energetic efforts of meaning entrepreneurs ? some from the National Rifle Association,
who have press a particular view of the Second Amendment.
--Cass R. Sunstein, A Constitution of Many Minds, Princeton University Press,
2009, p. 172-173
The National Association of Broadcasters and others with similar economic interests
typically use the First Amendment in precisely the same way the National Rifle
Association uses the Second Amendment. We should think of the two camps as
jurisprudential twins. The National Association of Broadcasters is prepared to make selfserving
and outlandish claims about the First Amendment before the public and before
the courts, and to pay lawyers and publicists a lot of money to help establish those claims.
(Perhaps they will ultimately succeed.) The National Rifle Association does the same
thing with the Second Amendment. In both cases, those whose social and economic
interests are at stake are prepared to use the Constitution, however implausibly invoked,
in order to give a veneer of principle and respectability to arguments that would
otherwise seem hopelessly partisan and self-interested.
--Cass R. Sunstein, Republic 2.0, Princeton University Press, 2007, p. 173
?[A]lmost all gun control legislation is constitutionally fine. And if the Court is right,
then fundamentalism does not justify the view that the Second Amendment protects an
individual right to bear arms. ?
- Cass Sunstein, writing in his book, ?Radicals in Robes?
In 1991, Warren E. Burger, the conservative chief justice of the Supreme Court, was
interviewed on the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour about the meaning of the Second
Amendment's "right to keep and bear arms." Burger answered that the Second
Amendment "has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud--I repeat the word
'fraud'--on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my
lifetime." In a speech in 1992, Burger declared that "the Second Amendment doesn't
guarantee the right to have firearms at all. "In his view, the purpose of the Second
Amendment was "to ensure that the 'state armies'--'the militia'--would be maintained for
the defense of the state."
It is impossible to understand the current Second Amendment debate without lingering
over Burger's words. Burger was a cautious person as well as a conservative judge, and
the chief justice of the Supreme Court is unlikely to offer a controversial position on a
constitutional question in an interview on national television. (Chief Justice John Roberts
is not about to go on Fox News to say that the claimed right to same-sex marriage is a
fraud on the American people perpetrated by special interest groups.) Should we
therefore conclude that Burger had a moment of uncharacteristic recklessness? I do not
think so. Burger meant to describe what he saw as a clear consensus within the culture of
informed lawyers and judges?a conclusion that was so widely taken for granted that it
seemed to him to be a fact, and not an opinion at all.
-- Cass R. Sunstein, ?The Most Mysterious Right,? National Review, November
12, 2007
?[T]he Second Amendment seems to specify its own purpose, which is to protect the
"well regulated Militia." If that is the purpose of the Second Amendment (as Burger
believed), then we might speculate that it safeguards not individual rights but federalism
-- Cass R. Sunstein, ?The Most Mysterious Right,? National Review, November
12, 2007
?[T]he Supreme Court is now being asked to decide whether the Second Amendment
creates an individual right to own guns. There is a decent chance that the Court will say
that it does. Whatever the Court says, we have seen an amazingly rapid change in
constitutional understandings--even a revolution--as an apparently fraudulent
interpretation pushed by "special interest groups" (read: the National Rifle Association)
has become mainstream.
-- Cass R. Sunstein, ?The Most Mysterious Right,? National Review, November
12, 2007
Even if the Second Amendment does confer an individual right, and therefore imposes
limits on national gun-control legislation, a further question remains. Does the Second
Amendment apply to the states? By its plain terms, the original Bill of Rights applies
only to the national government. To be sure, most (but not all) of the listed rights are now
understood to have been "incorporated" in the Fourteenth Amendment and made
applicable to the states through that route. But is the Second Amendment incorporated as
well?
-- Cass R. Sunstein, ?The Most Mysterious Right,? National Review, November
12, 2007
How did the individual rights position, so marginal and even laughable among judges and
lawyers for so long, come to be treated as a respectable view--and even to be described as
the standard model by 2007? It is certainly relevant that the National Rifle Association,
and other like-minded groups and individuals, have sponsored and funded an endless
stream of supportive papers and research. The Second Amendment revolution has been
influenced by an intensely committed social movement with political and legal arms. But
it is also true that for many decades lawyers and law professors paid hardly any attention
to the Second Amendment.
-- Cass R. Sunstein, ?The Most Mysterious Right,? National Review, November
12, 2007
But whatever the founding generation may have thought, the Second Amendment has
become a shorthand, or a rallying cry, for a deeply felt commitment on the part of tens of
millions of Americans. There would be not merely prudence, but also a kind of charity
and respect, in judicial decisions that uphold reasonable restrictions without rejecting that
commitment, and without purporting to untangle the deepest mysteries about the meaning
of the Constitution's most mysterious provision.
-- Cass R. Sunstein, ?The Most Mysterious Right,? National Review, November
12, 2007
In the context of use of guns, it might be helpful to emphasize that the National Rifle
Association is funded in large part by gun manufacturers, and that manufacturers of guns
are often behind efforts to claim that the Constitution guarantees rights of gun ownership.
In 2008 the Supreme Court ruled, for the first time, that the Second Amendment confers
an individual the right to own guns for nonmilitary purposes. In doing so, the Court was
greatly influenced by the social setting in which it operated, where that judgment already
had broad public support. In recent years, there has come to be a general social
understanding that the Second Amendment does protect at least some kind of individual
right; and that understanding greatly affects American politics. The Supreme Court?s
ruling in favor of an individual?s right to bear arms for military purposes was not really a
statement on behalf of the Constitution, as it was written by those long dead; it was based
on judgments that are now widespread among the living.
--Cass R. Sunstein, A Constitution of Many Minds, Princeton University Press,
2009, p. 5
But there is a radically different reading of Heller. The constitutional text is ambiguous,
and many historians believe that the Second Amendment does not, in fact, create a right
to use guns for nonmilitary purposes.8 In their view, the Court?s reading is untrue to the
relevant materials. If they are right, then it is tempting to understand Heller not as
Marbury but as a modern incarnation of Lochner v. New York, in which the Court
overrode democratic judgments in favor of a dubious understanding of the Constitution.
--Cass R. Sunstein, ?Second Amendment Minimalism,? Harvard Law Review,
Vol. 122: 246
huskergun:
Hunting & Animal Rights
"We ought to ban hunting"
- Cass Sunstein, in a 2007 speech at Harvard University
?[Humans?] willingness to subject animals to unjustified suffering will be seen ? as a
form of unconscionable barbarity? morally akin to slavery and the mass extermination
of human beings.?
- Cass Sunstein, in a 2007 speech at Harvard University
But I think that we should go further. We should focus attention not only on the
?enforcement gap,? but on the areas where current law offers little or no protection. In
short, the law should impose further regulation on hunting, scientific experiments,
entertainment, and (above all) farming to ensure against unnecessary animal suffering. It
is easy to imagine a set of initiatives that would do a great deal here, and indeed
European nations have moved in just this direction. There are many possibilities.
--Cass R. Sunstein, ?The Rights of Animals: A Very Short Primer,? John M. Olin
Law & Economics Working Paper No. 157, The Law School, The University of
Chicago
If we understand "rights" to be legal protection against harm, then many animals already
do have rights, and the idea of animal rights is not terribly controversial... Almost
everyone agrees that people should not be able to torture animals or to engage in acts of
cruelty against them. And indeed, state law includes a wide range of protections against
cruelty and neglect. We can build on state law to define a simple, minimalist position in
favor of animal rights: The law should prevent acts of cruelty to animals.
--Cass R. Sunstein, Martha C. Nussbaum. Animal Rights: Current Debates and
New Directions. (Oxford University Press, USA, 2004). Introduction
?We could even grant animals a right to bring suit without insisting that animals are
persons, or that they are not property. A state could certainly confer rights on a pristine
area, or a painting, and allow people to bring suit on its behalf, without therefore saying
that that area and that painting may not be owned. It might, in these circumstances, seem
puzzling that so many people are focusing on the question of whether animals are
property. We could retain the idea of property but also give animals far more protection
against injury or neglect of their interests.?
--Cass R. Sunstein, Martha C. Nussbaum. Animal Rights: Current Debates and
New Directions. (Oxford University Press, USA, 2004). P. 11
Do animals have standing? To many people, the very idea seems odd. But several cases
suggest that the answer might be yes.
In a remarkably large number of cases in the federal courts, animals appear as named
plaintiffs.
?Indeed, I have not been able to find any federal statute that allows animals to sue in
their own names. As a rule, the answer is therefore quite clear: Animals lack standing as
such, simply because no relevant statute confers a cause of action on animals.
It seems possible, however, that before long, Congress will grant standing to animals to
protect their own rights and interests. Congress might do this in the belief that in some
contexts, it will be hard to find any person with an injury in fact to bring suit in his own
name. And even if statutes protecting animal welfare are enforceable by human beings,
Congress might grant standing to animals in their own right, particularly to make a public
statement about whose interests are most directly at stake, partly to increase the number
of private monitors of illegality, and partly to bypass complex inquiries into whether
prospective human plaintiffs have injuries in fact. Indeed, I believe that in some
circumstances, Congress should do just that, to provide a supplement to limited public
enforcement efforts.
--Cass R. Sunstein, Martha C. Nussbaum. Animal Rights: Current Debates and
New Directions. (Oxford University Press, USA, 2004). P. 259-260
In the future, legislative decisions on such questions will have considerable symbolic
importance. But they will not only be symbolic, for they will help define the real-world
meaning of legal texts that attempt to protect animal welfare ? statutes that now promise
a great deal but deliver far too little.
--Cass R. Sunstein, Martha C. Nussbaum. Animal Rights: Current Debates and
New Directions. (Oxford University Press, USA, 2004). P. 261
Do animals have rights? Almost everyone believes in animal rights, at least in some
minimal sense; the real question is what that phrase actually means. By exploring that
question, it is possible to give a clear sense of the lay of the land?to show the range of
possible positions, and to explore what issues, of theory or fact, separate reasonable
people. On reflection, the spotlight should be placed squarely on the issue of suffering
and well-being. This position requires rejection of some of the most radical claims by
animal rights advocates, especially those that stress the ?autonomy? of animals, or that
object to any human control and use of animals. But this position has radical implications
of its own. It strongly suggests, for example, that there should be extensive regulation of
the use of animals in entertainment, in scientific experiments, and in agriculture. It also
suggests that there is a strong argument, in principle, for bans on many current uses of
animals.
--Cass R. Sunstein, ?The Rights of Animals: A Very Short Primer,? John M. Olin
Law & Economics Working Paper No. 157, The Law School, The University of
Chicago
?[R]epresentatives of animals should be able to bring private suits to ensure that
anticruelty and related laws are actually enforced. If, for example, a farm is treating
horses cruelly and in violation of legal requirements, a suit could be brought, on behalf of
those animals, to bring about compliance with the law.
--Cass R. Sunstein, ?The Rights of Animals: A Very Short Primer,? John M. Olin
Law & Economics Working Paper No. 157, The Law School, The University of
Chicago
Now turn to some quite radical suggestions. Suppose that we continue to believe that
animal suffering is the problem that should concern us, and that we want to use the law to
promote animal welfare. We might conclude that certain practices cannot be defended
and should not be allowed to continue, if, in practice, mere regulation will inevitably be
insufficient?and if, in practice, mere regulation will ensure that the level of animal
suffering will remain very high. To make such an argument convincing, it would be
helpful, whether or not necessary, to argue not only that the harms to animals are serious,
but also that the benefits, to human beings, of the relevant practices are simply too small
to justify the continuation of those practices. Many people who urge radical steps?who
think, for example, that people should not eat meat?do so because they believe that
without such steps, the level of animal suffering will be unacceptably severe.
--Cass R. Sunstein, ?The Rights of Animals: A Very Short Primer,? John M. Olin
Law & Economics Working Paper No. 157, The Law School, The University of
Chicago
Of course the largest issue involves eating meat. I believe that that meat-eating would be
acceptable if decent treatment is given to the animals used for food. Killing animals,
whether or not troublesome, is far less troublesome than suffering. But if, as a practical
matter, animals used for food are almost inevitably going to endure terrible suffering,
then there is a good argument that people should not eat meat to the extent that a refusal
to eat meat will reduce that suffering. Of course a legal ban on meat-eating would be
extremely radical, and like prohibition, it would undoubtedly create black markets and
have a set of bad, and huge, side-effects. But the principle seems clear: People should be
much less inclined to eat meat if their refusal to do so would prevent significant suffering.
--Cass R. Sunstein, ?The Rights of Animals: A Very Short Primer,? John M. Olin
Law & Economics Working Paper No. 157, The Law School, The University of
Chicago
We should increase the likelihood that animals will have good lives?we should not try
to ensure that there are as many animals as possible.
--Cass R. Sunstein, ?The Rights of Animals: A Very Short Primer,? John M. Olin
Law & Economics Working Paper No. 157, The Law School, The University of
Chicago
Every reasonable person believes in animal rights. Even the sharpest critics of animal
rights support the anticruelty laws. I have suggested that the simple moral judgment
behind these laws is that animal suffering matters, and that this judgment supports a
significant amount of reform. Most modestly, private suits should be permitted to prevent
illegal cruelty and neglect.
--Cass R. Sunstein, ?The Rights of Animals: A Very Short Primer,? John M. Olin
Law & Economics Working Paper No. 157, The Law School, The University of
Chicago
Less modestly, anticruelty laws should be extended to areas that are now exempt from
them, including scientific experiments and farming. There is no good reason to permit the
level of suffering that is now being experienced by millions, even billions of living
creatures.
--Cass R. Sunstein, ?The Rights of Animals: A Very Short Primer,? John M. Olin
Law & Economics Working Paper No. 157, The Law School, The University of
Chicago
Those who emphasize suffering have a simple answer to this objection: Everything
depends on whether and to what extent the animal in question is capable of suffering. If
rats are able to suffer, then their interests are relevant to the question of how, and perhaps
even whether, they can be expelled from houses.
--Cass R. Sunstein, Martha C. Nussbaum. Animal Rights: Current Debates and
New Directions. (Oxford University Press, USA, 2004). P. 12
The idea here is that animals, species as such, and perhaps even natural objects warrant
respect for their own sake, and quite apart from their interactions with human beings.
Sometimes such arguments posit general rights held by living creatures (and natural
objects) against human depredations. In especially powerful forms, these arguments are
utilitarian in character, stressing the often extreme and unnecessary suffering of animals
who are hurt or killed. The Animal Welfare Act reflects these concerns.
--Cass R. Sunstein, After the Rights Revolution: Reconceiving the Regulatory
State, Harvard University Press, 1993, p. 69
huskergun:
The Judiciary
It is reasonable to suggest that the meaning of federal statutory law should not be based
on whether a litigant has drawn a panel of judges appointed by a president from a
particular party?or on whether the Supreme Court is dominated by judges of any
particular ideological stripe.
--Thomas J. Miles & Cass R. Sunstein, Do Judges Make Regulatory Policy? An
Empirical Investigation of Chevron, AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory
Studies, Working Paper 06-15, May 2006
Government Regulation
No institution in the executive branch, moreover, is currently responsible for long-range
research and thinking about regulatory problems. It would be highly desirable to create
such an office under the President, particularly for exploring problems whose solutions
require extensive planning, most notably the environment. Nor is there an office charged
with acting as an initiator of as well as a brake on regulation. Some entity within the
executive branch, building on the ombudsman device, should be entrusted with the job of
guarding against failure to implement regulatory programs. Such an entity would be
especially desirable in overcoming the collective action and related problems that tend to
defeat enforcement.
--Cass R. Sunstein, After the Rights Revolution: Reconceiving the Regulatory
State, Harvard University Press, 1990, p. 108
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has been entrusted with the
power to coordinate regulatory policy and to ensure reasonable priority-setting. In the
Clinton Administration, OIRA appears to have become an advisory body, more limited in
its power than it was in the Bush and Reagan administrations. In view of the absence of
good priority-setting, and the enormous room for savings costs and increasing regulatory
benefits, this is highly unfortunate.
-- Cass R. Sunstein, Free Markets & Social Justice, Oxford University Press,
1997, p. 315
OIRA should see, as one of its central assignments, the task of overcoming governmental
myopia and tunnel vision, by ensuring aggregate risks are reduced and that agency focus
on particular risks does not mean that ancillary risks are ignored or increased.
-- Cass R. Sunstein, Free Markets & Social Justice, Oxford University Press,
1997, p. 315
Congress should add to existing legislation a general requirement that agencies consider a
range of risks to life and health, including substitute risks, to the extent that this is
feasible. Finally, OIRA should undertake the process of scrutinizing risk regulations to
show that agency action does not suffer from the kind of tunnel vision exemplified by so
much of modern risk regulation.
Problems of selective attention, interest-group power, and myopia have created a range of
irrationalities and injustices in modern government.
-- Cass R. Sunstein, Free Markets & Social Justice, Oxford University Press,
1997, p. 316
huskergun:
Free Speech
?Many discussion groups and websites, less and often more extreme, that can be found
on the Internet. Discussion groups and websites of this kind have been around for a
number of years? On the National Rifle Association?s ?Bullet N? Board,? a place for
discussion of matters of mutual interest, someone calling himself ?Warmaster? explained
how to make bombs out of ordinary household materials. Warmaster explained, ?These
simple, powerful bombs are not very well known even though all the materials can be
easily obtained by anyone (including minors).?
--Cass R. Sunstein, Republic 2.0, Princeton University Press, 2007, p. 47
To the extent that they weaken the power of the general interest intermediaries and
increase people?s ability to wall themselves off from topics and opinions that they would
prefer to avoid, emerging technologies, including the Internet, create serious dangers.
I don?t want government regulation of the blogosphere in the form of mandated links or
mandated civility or, you know, if you?re doing liberal ideas on your site you have to
have conservative ideas too. I don?t want any of that stuff? But I do have some ideas
and they?re about private voluntary solutions. One is that blog providers, either writers or
those who operate them should, if they are involved in opinion ? at least most of the time,
work hard to obey norms of, let?s call them, civility and diversity. So not complete
diversity. You?re entitled to have a point of view. But to think that some of the time if
people are reading you its good to catch their eye with something that might irritate them
a bit.
-- Bloggingheads.tv, Cass R. Sunstein, University of Chicago Law School and
Eugene Volokh, The Volokh Conspiracy, UCLA Law School video debate,
recorded May 27, 2008 and posted June 2, 2008.
A legislative effort to regulate broadcasting in the interest of democratic principles should
not be seen as an abridgment of the free speech guarantee.
--Cass R. Sunstein, Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech, The Free Press,
1995, p. 92
I have argued in favor of a reformulation of First Amendment law. The overriding goal of
the reformulation is to reinvigorate processes of democratic deliberation, by ensuring
greater attention to public issues and greater diversity of views. The First Amendment
should not stand as an obstacle to democratic efforts to accomplish these goals. A New
Deal for speech would draw on Justice Brandeis? insistence on the role of free speech in
promoting political deliberation and citizenship. It would reject Justice Holmes?
?marketplace? conception of free speech, a conception that disserves the aspirations of
those who wrote America?s founding document.
--Cass R. Sunstein, Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech, The Free Press,
1995, p. 119
Consider the ?fairness doctrine,? now largely abandoned but once requiring radio and
television broadcasters:
?In light of astonishing economic and technological changes, we must doubt whether,
as interpreted, the constitutional guarantee of free speech is adequately serving
democratic goals. It is past time for a large-scale reassessment of the appropriate role of
the First Amendment in the democratic process.
--Cass R. Sunstein, Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech, The Free Press,
1995, p. xi
A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not
necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government.
--Cass Sunstein, arguing for a Fairness Doctrine for the Internet in his book,
Republic.com 2.0 (Princeton University Press, 2007), p.137
Many people all over the world have become even more concerned about the risks of a
situation in which like-minded people speak or listen mostly to one another?Democracy
does best with what James Madison called a ?yielding and accommodating spirit,? and
that spirit is at risk whenever people sort themselves into enclaves in which their own
views and commitments are constantly reaffirmed? Such sorting should not be
identified with freedom, and much less with democratic self-government.
--Cass Sunstein, arguing for a Fairness Doctrine for the Internet in his book,
Republic.com 2.0 (Princeton University Press, 2007), p. xii
huskergun:
Civil Liberties
Courts should ordinarily require restrictions on civil liberties to be authorized by the
legislature, not simply by the executive.
--Cass R. Sunstein, Fear & Liberty, working paper, December 12, 2004
The availability heuristic and probability neglect often lead people to treat risks as much
greater than they in fact are, and hence to accept risk-reduction strategies that do
considerable harm and little good. Civil liberties may be jeopardized for precisely this
reason. And when the burdens of government restrictions are faced by an identifiable
minority rather by the majority, the risk of unjustified action is significantly increased.
--Cass R. Sunstein, Fear & Liberty, working paper, December 12, 2004
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