In Constitutional Personae: Heroes, Soldiers, Minimalists, and Mutes, law professor Sunstein (Blink), former administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under President Obama, articulates a new way of understanding how the U.S. Supreme Court works.

You’ve written other books on the judiciary. Why did you write this one?

After teaching constitutional law for decades, I realized that our debates about it are missing something really important—that there are certain personality types whom we are intuitively drawn toward. I’d been focused on the more standard debates—should you follow the original intent? Should the court protect minorities? That set of arguments, while important, misses the immediate psychological affinities people have for certain types in the legal and political arenas.

What are those types?

Heroes are comfortable with big, bold strokes, such as striking down the Affordable Care Act, and soldiers defer to decisions by the political branches, such as Congress passing the Affordable Care Act. Many people are drawn to minimalists, who speak softly and carry a small stick; cautious people who say it’s not time for drama, it’s time to make a marginal difference. And then there are mutes, who just believe that silence is best when it comes to difficult legal questions.

So we’ve had successful minimalist or mute politicians?

Many of our most celebrated political figures were heroes, who had bold visions: Lincoln, F.D.R. But some prominent presidents, such as Clinton, were impressively minimalist. He wasn’t passing huge legislation or fundamentally changing the country, but was making incremental improvements. And some people are drawn, even in campaigns, to someone whom they believe will be a stable, steady hand.

What role should humility play in all of this?

Humility is of central importance; I think it’s an underappreciated virtue in the contemporary discussion of law and politics. Humility is a recognition that, however much time we spend on a topic, we probably know a lot less than there is to be known, and a lot less than we think we do; so for judges to be cautious about dealing with an environmental question, or immigration, or the Internet, makes a lot of sense, because they have a limited stock of knowledge. I think that’s very important, so if I have to choose among the four personae, I choose the minimalist. It’s good to come up with approaches that are not going to create terrible trouble if we turn out to be wrong. There are lots of ways of approaching governing that guard against your own capacity for error.