Author Archive | Jacob Levy

During a dispute over Parliament’s authority to legislate over Guernsey and Jersey, it was once asserted that the islands “had as good, if not a better right, originally to legislate for Great Britatin then, than Great Britain had to legislate for them.” (Hansard’sv:629, 1805, cited in Charles Howard McIlwain, The American Revolution: A Constitutional Interpretation, […]

One quick note from sunny Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where I’m running back and forth from spending time with my family, attending the New England Political Science Association (where I took part in an enjoyable roundtable on Randy’s new book as well as presenting new work of myown) and attending my 15th high school reunion (conveniently […]

I’ve tried not to keep beating the Randy “Ethicist” Cohen horse; I’ve had my say, and he’s still a famous syndicated and NTYM columnist and I’m not, so I guess the market has spoken. I try to exercise the willpower not to check up on him, sometimes lapse, and am sometimes annoyed and sometimes bored. […]

My review essay of Brian Barry’s Culture and Equality, “Liberal Jacobinism,” Ethics 114 (January 2004): 318-336, is now online. (That link is html; the pdf is here.) Links are probably only open to those whose institutions subscribe to Ethics, though that will cover most people accessing the web via universities.

Via Dan: The not-terribly-surprising but still most unpleasant news that Hoover’s Larry Diamond– the democratization scholar and optimist, editor of the Journal of Democracy, and sometime advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority– has decided not to go back to Iraq. “We just bungled this so badly,” said Diamond, a 52-year-old senior fellow at Stanford University’s […]

Two posts at Crooked Timber on Friday, none on Saturday or Sunday. Three posts on Saturday and Sunday combined here at Volokh, even though Eugene’s finished reading the latest Stephenson doorstopper. (I haven’t started it yet. Conference season.) Nothing since Thursday from Drezner. Nothing since Thursday from John and Belle, who admittedly have an excellent […]

A while ago, when our esteemed colleagues over at Crooked Timber added the learned and witty John Holbo and Belle Waring to their ranks, I noted that this gave CT 15 members, as against 14 Conspirators. I now realize that the count of 14 was based on the roll to in the left-hand sidebar– a […]

A question for Eugene: It looks to me as if your (persuasive) argument about unlawful combatant detainees doesn’t turn at any point on the status of Guantanamo Bay as a place. That is, if I’ve read your argument correctly it would be legal (or, which might be different, unreviewable by U.S. civilian courts) to hold […]

There has been intermittent commentary in the blogosphere about how much we political scientists envied the availability of online resources like SSRN for pre-prints, working papers, and so on. A group of political science associations have launched www.politicalscience.org, which is starting off as a searchable database of conference papers but which is supposed to expand […]

The most exciting passage in the opinion Eugene blogs below is, as far as I’m concerned, in Thomas’ concurrence. “I cannot agree that the Indian Commerce Clause “provide[s] Congress with plenary power to legislate in the field of Indian affairs.” At one time, the implausibility of this assertion at least troubled the Court, see, e.g., […]

An obvious point, I guess. But if you’re going to write an article claiming that “a growing faction of conservatives is voicing doubts about a prolonged United States military involvement in Iraq, putting hawkish neoconservatives on the defensive and posing questions for President Bush about the degree of support he can expect from his political […]

Ramesh Ponnuru writes: While I’m on the subject of this blog, I may as well mention a post there that had caused me some puzzlement. Jacob Levy, in the course of making a point about originalism that I think is wholly sound, remarked that he thought that the “fast track” procedures for approving trade agreements […]

Blogging will be low, and responses to blog-oriented e-mails will be slow or nonexistent, until I’m through the next several weeks of conferences– especially this one:”Colonialism and Its Legacies,” the 2004 Annual International Meeting of the Conference for the Study of Political Thought, will be held April 23-25, 2004 at the University of Chicago’s Gleacher […]

I’m with Will. This question from Milbarge at Begging the Question is too easy. Is there anything that an originalist interpretation of the constitution tells you is constitutional, but that you’re against anyway, say as a matter of policy, or that you’d vote against as a legislator? Even an originalist whose understanding of original understanding […]

Slate’s Explainer says that 700 million Peeps will be eaten this year. That’s all? Just two-and-a-half per man, woman, and child? Call it three for everyone old enough to be allowed to eat (semi-)solid food but not so old to have lost their teeth. Of those 230 million or so, 40 million are on low-carb […]