Obama was poised to name Cass Sunstein, an American legal scholar, to an existing White House post as the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Sunstein would oversee government regulations and devise new approaches for government efficiencies.

From the archive:

Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly.

People, it turns out, want to be generous and they want to retain their dignity -- even when it doesn’t really make sense.

Organizations and nations are far more likely to prosper if they welcome dissent and promote openness.

Filtering and focusing on people's interests creates a diverse society with many points of view, but commonality creates one whose members can understand each other.

We should explore ways to structure the law to defer political and legal decision-making downward to decentralized group–based decision–making. If we take seriously the potential impact of technology on collective action, we ought to think about what it means to give groups body as well as soul — to "incorporate" them.