As I've often said, although I strongly support Barack Obama and believe it is vital that he be elected president in the fall, his politics seem to me to be far more centrist than they are liberal, and I don't believe he's a reliable ally for progressives. One the reasons is I believe this to be true is the people he surrounds himself with. Take, for example, Cass Sunstein, whom Matt Stoller has described as "an important influence" on Obama (also, Sunstein is married to Samantha Power, who has been one of Obama's foreign policy advisers). Sunstein, a prolific legal scholar who teaches at Harvard, probably has as good a shot as anyone as being named to the Supreme Court, should Obama become president.
I took Sunstein's labor and employment law class when he was here at the University of Chicago, and I'll say for this him: he is an cogent and engaging lecturer and an excellent teacher who, unlike so many other superstar professors, remains accessible to students (when I was taking his class and emailed him questions, he never failed to respond within minutes).
That said, though, I haven't been impressed with what I've read of Sunstein's writings, and while he's often characterized as a liberal, many of the ideas and policies he supports don't seem very liberal to me. For example, although he doesn't believe Roe v. Wade should be overturned, he has argued that the case was "wrongly decided," and he's made the dubious argument that the Roe decision ended up being counterproductive because it caused a political backlash. He's written in quite a Heather-ish way about the threat that the internet allegedly poses to democracy -- see this issue of the Boston Review for his argument, and for the responses of a number of scholars who do a fairly thorough job of debunking it.
Then there's Sunstein's most recent book which concerns behavioral economics and which, as Stoller points out, accepts many dubious conservative frames and notions about markets. This is especially troubling news to keep in mind if Sunstein gets on the Supreme Court, given how far right the Court has lurched on economic issues over the last couple of decades, especially recently. Sunstein has also shown extremely poor judgment by supporting John Roberts' nomination to the Court and by saying flattering (but misleading) things about the judicial philosophy of Samuel Alito. And let's not forget Sunstein's warm regard for the work of John Yoo, either.
[....]
When I had him as a professor for my labor and employment law class, Sunstein steered clear of politics and his ideology wasn't easy to discern. I did know he had a reputation for being a liberal, though -- which is why I was startled at remarks he made during one campus event. I can't remember what it was about, exactly, but I do remember that the Federalist Society -- the ultra-conservative legal group dedicated to jampacking the courts and the federal bureaucracy with their own and fighting off liberal nominees and liberal ideas by any means necessary -- was hosting the event, and Sunstein, I believe, was introducing the speaker. In his introduction, shamelessly sucked up to Federalist Society. It wasn't just the usual polite "thank you for organizing this event" kind of thing -- Sunstein went on and on about wonderful the Federalist Society was, and how much they'd improved the tone of the debate and nurtured the discussion of "ideas." He also defended them from what he'd said were unfair attacks by liberals, and I think he may have even said something to the effect that they really weren't all that conservative.
[....]
http://thegspot.typepad.com/blog/2008/07/why-im-not-a-fa.html