In this week’s oral arguments in the two gay marriage cases before the Supreme Court, right and left-wing litigants continued to take unaccustomed positions on standing: the technical legal doctrine that determines whether would-parties to a lawsuit have enough of an interest at stake to be allowed to participate in the case. Historically, conservatives have […]
Author Archive | Ilya Somin
Reading the Tea Leaves in the Proposition 8 Same-Sex Marriage Oral Argument
By Ilya Somin on March 27, 2013 11:39 pm in Gay Marriage, Gay Rights, Same-Sex Marriage, Sex Discrimination
Most commentators, including the VC’s own Dale Carpenter, have concluded after the Proposition 8 oral argument that the Supreme Court is unlikely to strike down the California law banning gay marriage. I predicted such an outcome last year, and in this recent post, pointing out that the Supreme Court is unlikely to announce a nationwide […]
How to Figure Out When Laws Banning Same-Sex Marriage Became Unconstitutional and Why the Precise Date May Not Matter
By Ilya Somin on March 26, 2013 11:44 pm in Constitutional Theory, Gay Marriage, Gay Rights, Originalism, Sex Discrimination
At today’s Proposition 8 oral argument, Justice Scalia asked Ted Olson, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, “when did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted?” The intuition behind Scalia’s question is that if a law would not have been unconstitutional on the day the Fourteenth […]
Justice Kennedy on Proposition 8 and Sex Discrimination
By Ilya Somin on March 26, 2013 9:52 pm in Gay Marriage, Gay Rights, Same-Sex Marriage, Sex Discrimination
In today’s Proposition 8 oral argument on the constitutionality of California’s law banning same-sex marriage, Justice Anthony Kennedy – a key swing voter on the Court – asked whether such a law qualifies as sex discrimination, which he called a ” a difficult question that I’ve been trying to wrestle with”: JUSTICE KENNEDY: Do you […]
Technical Difficulties Overcome
The VC posting page has been down for much of today due to technical problems. These problems have now been solved and – hopefully – will not recur. We apologize for any inconvenience. We will have a good deal more to say about today’s Proposition 8 oral argument shortly. Stay tuned!
Upcoming Talk on “Progressive Federalism” at Harvard Law School
On Tuesday, April 2, I will be speaking on federalism and its implications for various racial, ethnic, religious, and political minorities at Harvard Law School. I will be appearing with Yale Law School Professor Heather Gerken, a leading federalism scholar who has argued that her fellow progressives should take a more favorable view of federalism […]
Upcoming George Mason University Panel on the Tea Party and Voter Rationality
On Monday April 1, I will be speaking at a George Mason University School of Law panel on the Tea Party movement and voter rationality. Lots of data show that voters are often ignorant about politics and highly biased in their evaluation of the information they do know. The panel will focus on the extent […]
Communism, The Americans, and the Nature of Evil
The Americans, FX’s new TV series about KGB sleeper agents living in America in the early 1980s, has drawn mostly rave reviews. I have a somewhat mixed reaction. On the positive side, I thought that Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys are extremely effective in the lead roles of Elizabeth and Phillip Jennings, KGB agents who […]
A More Succinct Way to Declare War
Co-blogger Ken Anderson praises Joan of Arc’s lengthy 1429 declaration of war against the English. I prefer the more concise approach adopted by Sviatoslav I, the 10th century Prince of Kiev: “Иду на вы.” I would loosely translate this as “I’m coming to get you.” Admirably to the point. International law mavens could learn a […]
Scotland Considers Law Recognizing Wedding Ceremonies Performed by Jedi Knights
By Ilya Somin on March 22, 2013 2:21 am in Gay Marriage, Religion, Religion and the Law, Science Fiction/Fantasy
Scotland is considering a new law that would grant official recognition to wedding ceremonies performed by practitioners of the new “Jedi” religion: The Force is strong with the Jedi in Scotland. A bill under consideration in Scotland would grant those who have literally made “Star Wars” a religion the power to perform marriage ceremonies. The […]
Economics, Egalitarianism and Immigration
Economist Tyler Cowen has an interesting New York Times column on the egalitarianism underpinning economic analysis and its implications for immigration policy: Economic analysis is itself value-free, but in practice it encourages a cosmopolitan interest in natural equality…. The crucial implication is this: If you treat all individuals as fundamentally the same in your theoretical […]
Judicial Nominations and Competing Constitutional “Mainstreams”
By Ilya Somin on March 19, 2013 8:15 pm in Conservatism, Constitutional Law, Constitutional Theory, Judicial Nominations
In a recent column, Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein argues that Republican senators who have filibustered some of Barack Obama’s judicial nominees are more to blame than Democrats who previously filibustered GOP nominees because the Democrats only tried to block nominees who were “out of the mainstream,” while the GOP targeted any nominees whom they […]
Upcoming Talk on Democracy and Political Ignorance at Campbell University
This Thursday at 6 PM, I will be speaking about my forthcoming book Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford University Press) at Campbell University in North Carolina. The event wil lbe held in the Hartness Lecture Hall in the Science Building. The book itself will be published this fall. It argues […]
Video of My Father’s Talk at an Immigration Panel at Cary Library in Lexington, MA
My father, Yefim Somin, recently participated in a panel on memoirs of immigration at Cary Memorial Libary in Lexington, MA. The video is available here. As my father mentioned in the talk, his account of his immigration experience is available in this recent book of Russian Jewish immigrant memoirs published by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid […]
Immigration and the Constitution
The Open Borders blog – one of the best websites covering immigration issues – asked me to do a guest post on the implications of the Constitution to debates over immigration. The post is available here. Here is the intro: The US Constitution does not in itself tell us what kind of immigration policy is […]