Author Archive | Ilya Somin

In his recent Green Bag article, discussed in Orin Kerr’s post, Prof. David Garrow, one of the country’s top Supreme Court scholars, laments the fact Supreme Court clerks increasing come from court of appeals clerkships with “exceptionally liberal or highly conservative” ‘feeder’ judges, rather than with “equally well-respected but ideologically moderate jurists.” The implication is […]

Orin Kerr’s post and the comments to it raise the question of why we haven’t blogged about the detainee bill and the debate over torture. I can’t speak for anyone else, but in my case, I try to limit blogging to issues where I have a comparative advantage: that is, questions on which I can […]

Orin’s post raises the question of whether the Republicans supported Bill Clinton’s efforts to get Osama Bin Laden back in 1998, or whether they instead thought that he was “wagging the dog” and being too aggressive. As some of my own recent posts amply demonstrate, I am no fan of the Republican Party these days. […]

ESPN columnist Mark Kreidler laments the apparent fact that “Americans just can’t seem to dominate anymore” in international sports competitions: Not to go all Johnny Stormfront on you, but allow me to cover some recent ground for the U.S. on the international sports scene: • Women’s basketball: Lost in the semis of the World Championship. […]

I agree with most of Orin’s observations on Chief Justice Roberts’ adherence to his credo of “judicial modesty” in Rapanos v. United States and Gonzales v. Oregon. Here are a couple more points that seem to have been ignored in the David Savage LA Times article Orin criticizes: First, as I document in some detail […]

Even scholars with a skeptical attitude towards eminent domain have generally accepted the idea that it is often needed to build roads; I have in fact endorsed this conventional wisdom myself (e.g. – in this article). An important recent paper by Florida State University economist Bruce Benson challenges the orthodox view. Benson shows that the […]

The French newspaper L’Est Republicain has an excerpt from a DGSE (French intelligence agency) report that claims that Osama Bin Laden may have died of typhoid fever on August 23. U.S. English-language media have not reprinted the actual text of the September 21 DGSE report excerpted by L’Est Republicain. So I will do so here. […]

David Bernstein, Orin, and David Lat offer some useful tips to law students inteviewing with firms. I would add one more: do whatever you can to convey the impression that you’re enthusiastic about taking a job with the firm (without lying, of course). In my case, I lost out on many offers from major DC […]

Paul Horwitz of Prawfsblawg is taking nominations for the much-coveted title of “The Coolest Professor in the Legal Academy.” Of course, as Prof. Horwitz points out, “winning this title is a little like winning the prize for tallest Munchkin.”

Critics of my suggestion that the country may be better off, from a conservative/libertarian point of view, if the Republicans lose the House of Representatives make three main arguments: 1. The claim that incoming Democratic committee chairmen will cause greate harm. 2. The danger that the Republicans will react to defeat by moving to the […]

The liberal Washington Monthly, has put together a symposium of articles by prominent conservative (and two libertarian) commentators who argue that both the country and the conservative movement will be better off with a Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives this November. More surprisingly, National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg is flirting with endorsing the […]

There is now an ongoing and very prominent debate about the extent to which international law should be interpreted to override US domestic law. In this new paper, Northwestern law professor John McGinnis and I argue that the debate so far overlooks an important consideration: the undemocratic nature of the political processes by which most […]

On September 18, Iranian-American telecom entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari will become the first Muslim woman in space. She is a liberal Shiite Muslim who left Iran because “[d]espite her aptitude in mathematics and science, it would be next to impossible for her to study these subjects at an Iranian university because the . . . regime […]

I have long been fascinated by the fact that most conservatives support racial and ethnic profiling for national security and law enforcement purposes, yet are categorically opposed to the use of racial or ethnic classifications for affirmative action. Most liberals, by contrast, take exactly the opposite view. Both ideologies oppose racial and ethnic classifications as […]

For all you con law buffs, this coming Thursday, September 14, is Constitution Day at the Cato Institute: an all day conference featuring presentations on the most important Supreme Court cases of the 2005-2006 term. Among the presenters are leading legal scholars from across the political spectrum, such as liberal Walter Dellinger (discussing the upcoming […]