Introduction Regulation and Interpretation The Anachronistic Legal Culture 1. Why Regulation? A Historical Overview Public and Private Ordering 2. The Functions of Regulatory Statutes Market Failures Public-Interested Redistribution Collective Desires and Aspirations Diverse Experiences and Preference Formation Social Subordination Endogenous Preferences Irreversibility, Future Generations, Animals, and Nature Interest-Group Transfers and "Rent-Seeking" The Problem of Categorization 3. How Regulation Fails Failures in the Original Statute Implementation Failure Linking Statutory Function to Statutory Failure Paradoxes of the Regulatory State--and Reform 4. Courts, Interpretation, and Norms Flawed Approaches to Statutory Interpretation Interpretive Principles An Alternative Method 5. Interpretive Principles for the Regulatory State The Principles Priority and Harmonization Fissures in the Interpretive Community The Postcanonical Legal Universe 6. Applications, the New Deal, and Statutory Construction Particulars The New Deal and Statutory Construction Conclusion The Constitution of the Regulatory State--and Its Reform Interpreting the Regulatory State Appendix A. Interpretive Principles Appendix B. Selected Regulations in Terms of Cost Per Life Saved Appendix C. The Growth of Administrative Government Notes Index

Over the past decade Cass Sunstein has emerged as one of the country’s most prolific and provocative legal scholars. After the Rights Revolution is a rich discussion of how the courts have handled—and should handle—the plethora of regulatory statutes enacted since 1932. It deserves to be read widely by students of politics.

In this provocative and lively book, Sunstein argues that the Reagan adminstration's vigorous attack on government regulation was misplaced, contending that government regulation is superior to the behavior of private markets...Sunstein thus offers a spirited defense of the 'rights revolution' embodied in the new social and economic regulation--from clean air and water to antidiscrimination rules--that have swept government since the New Deal, and especially since the 1960s...The result is a careful, prescriptive study positioned among theorists' visions of justice, laywers' concepts of due process, and politicians' imperatives for effective policy. American Library Association Sunstein should be required reading on everybody's list of public affairs books. It's already on mine, for my undergraduate as well as graduate students. The analysis is rigorous, the message is clear. The book provides the defense of regulation we have needed during the laissez faire era. Yet it gives little comfort to knee-jerk regulators. In other words, it makes a great target for folks of every persuasion. -- Theodore J. Lowi, John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions, Cornell University Professor Sunstein makes use of an impressive range of materials and applies to them some considerable wisdom and good judgment. After the Rights Revolution is an important statement for the 1990s. -- Steven Kelman, Professor of Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University Sunstein calls on courts, and the rest of us, to redeem the promise of the New Deal and Great Society. A splendid statement of the role that law can play in building a more progressive America. -- Bruce A. Ackerman, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science, Yale Law School After the Rights Revolution is a powerful and provocative rethinking of regulatory jurisprudence. Cass Sunstein provides an illuminating review of how and why regulation succeeds and fails. He then offers new canons of construction that judges should use to interpret regulatory statutes in the public interest. This stimulating book is essential reading for public law and regulatory government. -- Richard B. Stewart, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Justice