James Hannaway · September 2019
87 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. Arguendo 26
In The Cost-Benefit Revolution, Cass Sunstein celebrates the dominance of cost-benefit analysis in administrative law and imagines new frontiers for its application. While he acknowledges problems associated with cost-benefit analysis like failing to account for unfair distributions of resources or intangible dignitary concerns, he fails to offer meaningful solutions. In Carceral Capitalism, Jackie Wang suggests that Sunstein’s technocratic solutions may be unsalvageable. She finds that governments who make decisions by mimicking markets (an approach which Sunstein advocates) tend to hurt the most vulnerable in society. By comparing both thinkers, one can see what is at stake in debates about costs and benefits in policymaking.
