Author Archive | Ilya Somin

This recent article in Higher Ed News summarizes a recent study showing that first or second generation immigrants (primarily from Africa and the Caribbean) make up 27% of the black students at a sample of “selective” universities, including over 40% at Ivy League schools (Hat tip: David Bernstein, who pointed out this article to me). […]

Yale Law Professor and prominent blogger Jack Balkin has an interesting discussion of some of the most prominent law professor blogs and the impact of blogging on legal scholarship and political discourse here. In one part of his post, Balkin puts forward a theory explaining which law professors are most likely to succeed as bloggers: […]

The New York Times story on the American Jewish Committee’s report criticizing left-wing opponents of Israel describes the AJC as a “conservative advocacy group.” This statement is very hard to reconcile with the facts, unless the Times is using an extremely idiosyncratic definition of “conservative.” Like most mainstream Jewish organizations, the AJC is in fact […]

University of San Diego law professor Michael Rappaport, a prominent originalist scholar, has two interesting posts (see here and here) building on my earlier discussion of the constitutionality of the Air Force under textualist and originalist theories of constitutional interpretation. I agree with most of Michael’s points, particularly his argument that critics of originalism (and […]

I don’t think it’s possible to justify all the plot holes and internal contradictions in the six Star Wars movies, particularly those in the, ahem, less-than-stellar, Episodes I-III. However, this is an interesting effort to address at least some of them (hat tip:co-blogger Tyler Cowen). In particular, the author explains how it is that Chewbacca […]

Over at Prawfsblawg, Paul Horwitz has an interesting post on the usefulness of the 19th century Mormon cases for teaching law and religion. In Reynolds v. United States 98 U.S. 145 (1879), the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Congress’ statute forcing Utah to outlaw polygamy (a practice then sanctioned by the Mormon faith) ; […]

After some technical difficulties, SSRN has finally been able to post the updated version of my forthcoming Stanford Law Review article “Should International Law be Part of Our Law?”(coauthored with John McGinnis). It is available here. I mention this only because, in recent days, Instapundit and the Legal Theory Blog have linked to an outdated […]

One argument that is often made against originalist and textualist approaches to constitutional interpretation is the claim that they would render the Air Force unconstitutional. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution seems to give Congress the authority to creat an Army and Navy, but not an Air Force. It grants Congress the following relevant […]

In this Wall Street Journal column, Jan Crawford Greenburg focuses on one of the findings of her new book on the Supreme Court’s recent history: that Clarence Thomas is not just a “lackey” of Antonin Scalia’s. In my view, this is actually one of Greenburg’s less original revelations. Other writers, such as Thomas biographer Andrew […]

The Virginia Law Review recently joined the group of law journals offering an online version with at least some unique content. You can visit “In Brief” here. (Hat tip: Larry Solum)   I’m sure the VC’s readership includes law students who are on journals that recently added online companions. I’d be very interested to hear from […]

Today is the release date for Jan Crawford Greenburg’s new book on the Supreme Court, Supreme Conflict. Amazon delivered it this afternoon, and so far I have read about 40 pages and skimmed another 50. So far it’s a must-read. Greenburg’s sourcing is incredible, as nine Justices and lots of other insiders agreed to talk […]

Over at BlackProf, my colleague Paul Butler has a very interesting post noting black achievement in popular culture right now: Three of the top five movies feature predominately African-American casts. Three of the top five songs are by black artists (and the remaining two artists- Fergie and Nelly Furtado – would be nowhere without African-American […]

On Friday, I’m going to be participating in a terrific symposium at Stanford that might be of interest to VC readers: Search & Seizure in the Digital Age, hosted by the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, Stanford Criminal Justice Center and Stanford Technology Law Review. The symposium will run all day at the Stanford […]

When I think of Weird Al Yankovic’s parodies, I mostly think of the 1980s. But his recent White & Nerdy is a pretty hilarious parody of Chamillionaire’s Ridin.

See the segments via YouTube here (O’Reilly on Colbert) and here (Colbert on O’Reilly). Best line: Colbert’s “If you’re an act, what am I?”   Hat tip: Raw story.