Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law School professor said to be Barack Obama’s choice as top regulator, would raise the profile of a little-known government office with expansive powers.

Sunstein, 54, a longtime friend of the president-elect, is Obama’s pick to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, according to an official in Obama’s transition office. He would oversee rulemaking for a president who has pledged expanded regulation in areas such as financial markets and climate change.

The office is responsible for analyzing whether federal regulations are worth the costs they impose on businesses. Sunstein’s nomination, subject to Senate confirmation, would make him the arbiter of debates within federal agencies on rules for everything from workplace dangers to auto safety and environmental protection.

“He’s probably the leading law professor in the country if not the world,” said Robert Hahn, executive director of the Center for Regulatory and Market Studies at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute. “He’s a brilliant pick.”

Susan Dudley currently serves as the head of the regulatory office under President George W. Bush, whose administration emphasized deregulation.

‘Hugely Important’

“It’s a hugely important office that nobody has heard of,” said Stuart Benjamin, a professor at Duke Law School in Durham, North Carolina. “You really need someone in the office who is not going to be playing political games and who has thought deeply about the best way to engage in cost/benefit analysis, and this is Cass Sunstein.”

Sunstein will have the president’s ear because of their long relationship, said Darrell West, director of government studies at the Washington-based Brookings Institution. The two were colleagues at the University of Chicago, where they both taught law.

“Sunstein will elevate the visibility” of the regulatory office, West said in an interview. He’s likely to push for using technology to make government more efficient and accountable, an issue Obama campaigned on, West said.

In March, Sunstein wrote an essay for the Huffington Post Web site praising Obama as an independent thinker who solves problems.

‘Even-Handed Analyst’

“This is the Barack Obama I have known for nearly 15 years -- a careful and even-handed analyst of law and policy, unusually attentive to multiple points of view,” Sunstein wrote.

Sunstein’s wife, Samantha Power, a Harvard human rights scholar, resigned from Obama’s presidential campaign as a foreign policy adviser in March after calling rival Hillary Clinton a “monster.” She rejoined Obama to serve on his transition team for the State Department. Clinton is Obama’s nominee for Secretary of State.

Sunstein’s areas of expertise include administrative law and policy, constitutional law, behavioral economics and environmental law.

He is also widely known for his writings on cost-benefit analysis and his views on structuring rules in a way that still gives people freedom of choice, Benjamin said.

At Harvard, Sunstein directed the school’s new program on risk regulation, which focuses on how law and policy deal with terrorism, climate change, occupational safety, infectious diseases, natural disasters and other hazards.

He has written or been co-author of more than 15 books and most recently studied the relationship between law and human behavior.

A graduate of Harvard Law School, Sunstein clerked for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and joined the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School in 1981.

“I would expect him to be very wise about how he approaches regulatory issues from climate change to just run-of-the-mill stuff,” said Hahn.

To contact the reporter on this story: Catherine Dodge in Washington, at Cdodge1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: January 8, 2009 16:31 EST