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I. INTRODUCTION
In 2013, British Prime Minister David Cameron sent shockwaves through the blogosphere when he announced his plan to change the default settings on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from automatically allowing pornography to automatically blocking it.1 His goal was to prevent children from accidentally accessing pornography. The full plan contained other childsensitive measures, including stricter bans on child pornography.2 The blogosphere met the measures with derision, incredulity, and disbelief that spouses would have to do the unthinkable-reveal their porn proclivity to their significant other in order to "opt in" to porn access.3
Although Cameron's proposal may be technologically difficult to achieve, it is relatively modest in terms of libertarian paternalism. The proposal merely changes a default from one in which consumers must opt out of a service to one in which they must opt in. Libertarian paternalism, a phrase coined by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, refers to a central component of behavioral law and economics (BLE)-the idea that good government should make it easier to make good decisions.4 Rather than overriding free will, choice architecture and public policy should "nudge" individuals toward decisions they would like to make but are unlikely to choose because they act like fallible humans instead of rational "Econs."5 A nudge is "any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people's behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives."6 Common examples include placing desserts and other fattening foods near the end of a cafeteria line or changing default settings to automatically enroll individuals in employee savings plans.7 Without nudges, an individual may be overcome by his impulsive "hot self"- leading the dieter to indulge in cheesecake now and regret it later, or the busy employee to neglect reading the IRA information packet until years of valuable matched contributions have been lost. Contrast this with the Econ-like "cold self, " which acts rationally in pursuit of long-term interests, and nudges make sense.8 It is not that individuals choose to gain weight or fail to save; instead, many are victims of their own irrational selves, and tend to make poor decisions without ambient prompts or extra measures of willpower.
Many on both the political Right and Left have accepted these principles for a...