It was widely reported yesterday, including this story in the Chicago Tribune, that the Obama administration will appoint Cass R. Sunstein, faculty member of the U of C Law School from 1981 to 2008, and currently the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard, to head up its Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs—a key position responsible for overhauling a broad range of federal regulations, including those of financial markets. The Tribune quotes one of Obama’s transition officials:

“This office is in charge of coordinating and overseeing government regulations… and a smarter approach to regulation is key to making government work better and getting better results in terms of protecting health, the environment, etc.”

In addition to his academic credentials, Sunstein has also authored and contributed to a large corpus of books and articles “devoted to exploring the relationship between law and human behavior,” several of which have been published by the press—most recently he co-authored Punitive Damages: How Juries Decide. See a complete list of UCP’s Sunstein titles.