Harvard Siphoning Off U of C Law's Best

By Mark Boyer in News on Feb 25, 2008 3:19PM

Last week, it was announced that one of the U of C Law School’s biggest superstars, Cass Sunstein, will be leaving for Harvard in the fall. Sunstein attended Harvard as an undergrad and for law school, and he later clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall. He’s been on faculty at the U of C for 27 years, and during that time he has written and edited at least a dozen books. Now, he's going to Harvard to "head a new program at Harvard on risk regulation," according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

According to the Chicago Maroon though, Sunstein will continue teaching at the U of C. Sunstein told the Maroon: “I love the University of Chicago, and I’m not completely severing ties with the University. At the minimum, I’ll be teaching a mini-course next quarter,” he told the Maroon.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Sunstein cited interest in collaborating with some of Harvard’s leading professors, particularly Ellen Cosgrove, Jack Goldsmith and Adrian Vermeule, who both previously worked at the U of C. Cosgrove and Goldsmith went over to Harvard Law in 2004, and Vermeule left the U of C for Harvard in 2005.

Considering the trend, it should come as no surprise that Harvard was also pursuing another of the U of C’s foremost law professors, Martha Nussbaum (who also teaches at the Divinity School and in the philosophy and classics departments). Nussbaum reportedly gave a big “no thanks” to both Harvard and Brown, which means that the U of C’s most celebrated power couple won't be splitting up, at least for now.