It is the holiday season! And if you happen to be looking for gifts for the VC readers in your life, books by VC bloggers might be a good choice. Among my favorite books by VC authors are Randy Barnett’s Restoring the Lost Constitution (now available in a new edition), David Bernstein’s Rehabilitating Lochner, Dale Carpenter, Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas, and Eugene Volokh, Academic Legal Writing.
Randy’s book is one of the best recent works on originalism and constitutional legitimacy; Rehabilitating Lochner explodes numerous myths about one of the Court’s most reviled decisions; Flagrant Conduct is a great account of a milestone in the history of gay rights; and Academic Legal Writing is filled with useful advice, while also making a generally boring subject seem interesting. This list is not intended to slight important books by Ken Anderson, Orin Kerr, David Kopel, David Post, and others, which I have not discussed only because their subjects are further from my areas of expertise than the above.
In the spirit of shameless self-promotion, I will also mention my own recently published Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter, and A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (coauthored with VC-ers Randy Barnett, Jonathan Adler, David Bernstein, Orin Kerr, and David Kopel). Democracy and Poitical Ignorance explains why widespread political ignorance is a serious problem for democracy, and strengthens the case for limiting and decentralizing government power, and for judicial review. Conspiracy Against Obamacare focuses on the VC’s role in the Obamacare litigation, and is the only book that includes contributions by six different VC bloggers. VC-reading Obamacare mavens may also want to check out The Health Care Case, which includes chapters by Jonathan Adler, Randy Barnett, and myself.