Legal Commentary

Long before he was a top advisor to Barack Obama . . . long before he was on the short list for any possible Supreme Court vacancies . . . long before he was the most prominent law professor in the world, Cass Sunstein was a member of the Harvard Lampoon, the nation's preeminent college humor magazine.   The Lampoon counts among its alumni numerous literary luminaries, from William Gaddis to George Plympton to John Updike.  It has also sent too many writers to count off to Hollywood, where they've written for every comedy show imaginable, from The Simpsons to SNL to Futurama to Different Strokes (I don't know for sure about that last one, but it seems plausible).  Conan O'Brien, for instance, was the President of the magazine when he was a student at Harvard.

As any legal academic knows, Sunstein is incredibly, amazingly, ridiculously prolific.  A quick search of a prominent academic database reveals that Sunstein has authored (or co-authored) 114 articles since the turn of the millennium.  And this doesn't count his many books and op-ed pieces and letters to Congress and who knows what else.  It is rumored that Sunstein once wrote an environmental law article for the Yale Law Journal with his left hand while writing a constitutional law piece for the Stanford Law Review with his right hand, at the same time.  (This rumor has not been confirmed, however.)  I myself am pretty sure that a few years ago I saw Sunstein on Nightline writing out an article on his laptop in between fielding questions from Ted Koppel.  (Again, not confirmed.)  So, imagine my surprise when I spent a couple of afternoons recently poring through issues of the Lampoon from 1972-1975 at the Boston Public Library and the Harvard Archives and was unable to find even one single signed piece written by Professor Sunstein.

Now, this doesn't mean that Sunstein didn't actually write anything for the magazine.  He certainly was on the masthead for about ten issues, and the December 1973 issue announces his election to the Lampoon with great fanfare: "With immoderate imbibition of the customary holiday spirits, a wild interpretative dance, and several calls from the Cambridge police, Lampy proudly tugs at the bellrope to announce the election of the following new members: ". . . Cass Robert Sunstein `75-2. . . ."  Many of the issues have unsigned pieces which Sunstein may have written or contributed to, and since the general view of Sunstein is that he's an incredibly kind and helpful person, maybe he even wrote a story and let someone else sign his or her name to it.  But unless I just missed it in my five or six flips through the relevant issues, Sunstein did not claim authorship of any piece during his tenure at the Lampoon.

Sunstein is, however, listed as a contributor to two parodies written by the Lampoon while he was on the staff.  The first is a parody of Parade, that weird magazine with the cartoon about the clever Saint Bernard that you find in a lot of Sunday newspapers.  Specifically, Sunstein is credited, along with two others, as a contributor to a column called "Keeping Up With Youth," which contains three little pieces, including my favorite, "Age the Difference," which includes this opening line: "Today's youth is consistently younger than their parents."  The piece continues: "As one college sophomore commented, 'if my father wasn't at least 20 years older than me, we'd practically be the same age.  If you're looking for a generation gap, I think you've got it there in a nutshell.'"

Sunstein is also listed as one of about ten contributors to the Lampoon's 1974 parody of Sports Illustrated.  The parody is 112 pages long, and there's no indication as to which of the articles Sunstein may have written (the authors are listed as people like Barry DeHatchett, Tex Tile, and Curry Ritzcrackrick).  It's too bad, because some of them are real gems, like the piece on the "International Wheelchair Diving Rolloffs," the article about fishing for deep sea elk, and a story about a golf tournament hosted by Idi Amin, featuring man-eating crocodiles, a minefield on the eighth hole, and sand traps filled with, you guessed it, quicksand.  In the entire parody, I think my favorite moment might be found in the "People" column, penned by "Jeannette Juice," who reports of Vida Green, the "world's oldest and least competent infielder," that his 715th career error "came with the bases loaded and no outs in the third inning of a game against the San Bernadino Grub Larvae, when Green totally misread a slow grounder to second and ended up booting it soccer-style into the left field upper deck."  Professor Sunstein, if you're reading this, please please tell me you wrote that.

(this post first appeared on Holy Hullabaloos in November)