The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting article on the use of eminent domain to forcibly acquire land for universities. It quotes various scholars and commentators on the subject, including yours truly: At a time when public university leaders regularly point to the advantages that private institutions have enjoyed over them in recent years […]
Author Archive | Ilya Somin
Thoughts on Romney’s Remarks on “the 47 Percent” Who Will Vote for Obama “No Matter What”
Much cyber-ink has already been spilled over Mitt Romney’s May fundraiser statement dismissing the “47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what” because they don’t pay income taxes and depend on government benefits. In my view, Romney’s statement reflects a crude and and largely inaccurate view of voter motivation. […]
Were African-Americans Part of “We the People” at the Time of the Founding?
In a recent public forum, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas made news by conceding that blacks were not part of “We the People” at the time of the Founding in the 1780s: It is true, Justice Clarence Thomas acknowledged the other night, that the “we the people” extolled in the Constitution 225 years ago did […]
Obama’s Lead in the Polls is Not a Historical Anomaly
Ever since Obama established a narrow but clear edge in the polls after the Democratic Convention, conservative commentators such as Niall Ferguson, Andrew McCarthy, John Hinderaker, and Peter Robinson have claimed that this is an unusual historical anomaly explicable only by Romney’s poor campaign strategy or lack of personal appeal, or by some sort of […]
Just Say No to Terrorism
In the 1980s, First Lady Nancy Reagan famously urged kids to “just say no” to drugs. Although I’m no fan of the War on Drugs, she was certainly correct to point out that saying “no” is a good way of avoiding the dangers of drug use. Co-blogger Eugene Volokh makes a similar argument with respect […]
Political Norms and the Unwritten Constitution
In a post commenting on recent guest-blogger Akhil Amar’s book The Unwritten Constitution, Gerard Magliocca suggests that the scope of the unwritten Constitution is broader than the book states: [M]y main criticism of the book is that I don’t like Amar’s definition of the unwritten Constitution. What do I mean by that? I mean that […]
The Arab Spring and the Video Riots
Ever since the Arab Spring began, I have been concerned that it could ultimately result in the establishment of Islamist regimes as bad or worse than the more secular dictatorships they replaced. One of the reasons for that fear is that public opinion in many Arab nations is highly illiberal and intolerant. As a result, […]
Property Rights Panel at the Cato Institute’s Constitution Day
Next Tuesday from 1 to 2:15 PM, I will be speaking at a panel on “Increasing Protections for Property Rights” at the Cato Institute’s Constitution Day. We will be covering the Court’s most recent property rights decisions, and also considering prospects for the future. Despite the recent unusual unanimous decision in Sackett v. EPA (which […]
Rejoinder to Akhil Amar on the Application of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Government
By Ilya Somin on September 13, 2012 6:23 pm in Constitutional Theory, Originalism, Racial Discrimination
I am grateful that Akhil Amar has taken the time to respond to my post criticizing his theory that the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment bans racial discrimination by the federal government as well as the states. Akhil makes some good points, but I think he continues to fall short on the central point […]
The Rise of Secessionism in Catalonia
Time has an interesting recent article highlighting the rise of secessionism in Catalonia. Many more Catalans than in the past want to secede from Spain because of the way the central government takes far more money out of the province than it puts back in: Sept. 11 always brings Barcelonans into the streets to dance […]
Akhil Amar on the Application of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Government
I am grateful to Akhil Amar for his comment on my post challenging claims that the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment allows affirmative action because Congress, in the 1860s and 70s adopted programs that gave “racial preferences” to recently freed African-American slaves. In my earlier post, I pointed out that these were federal government […]
Upcoming Talk on Democracy and Political Ignorance
This Thursday, I will be giving a talk on my book Democracy and Political Ignorance (under contract with the Stanford University Press), at the George Mason Economics Department Workshop on Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. The talk will run from 2 to 3:30 PM, in Enterprise Hall 318, at George Mason’s campus in Fairfax. I covered […]
Larry Solum on the Countermajoritarian Difficulty
By Ilya Somin on September 10, 2012 11:20 am in Constitutional Theory, Democracy, Representation-Reinforcement
Georgetown law professor Larry Solum has an excellent post summarizing the ongoing debate over the “countermajoritarian difficulty,” one of the most common criticisms of judicial review. Solum summarizes the “difficulty” as follows: The counter-majoritarian difficulty may be the best known problem in constitutional theory… The counter-majoritarian difficulty states a problem with the legitimacy of the […]
The Tea Party and Libertarianism
In this recent Cato Institute paper, Emily Ekins and David Kirby make an impressive case that the Tea Party movement is “functionally libertarian” force within the GOP. They collect extensive survey data showing that about half of self-identified Tea Party supporters are libertarian rather than social conservative (they support individual freedom on the social as […]
Originalism and Affirmative Action
By Ilya Somin on September 7, 2012 11:20 am in Affirmative Action, Constitutional Theory, Fisher v. University of Texas, Originalism
In this recent SCOTUSblog post on the upcoming Supreme Court case of Fisher v. University of Texas, David Gans and UCLA law professor Adam Winkler take conservative originalist opponents of affirmative action to task for ignoring originalism in their arguments against the constitutionality of racial preferences for minorities. They particularly single out Supreme Court Justices […]