Author Archive | Sasha Volokh

My new post, Philosophical Objections to Prison Privatization: Israeli Supreme Court strikes down privatization statute on “liberty” and “dignity” grounds, is up on the Reason Foundation website. Here’s an excerpt: This month is the fourth anniversary of an important date in privatization history. On November 19, 2009, in Academic Center of Law and Business, Human […]

As they say, “Better than n guilty men go free than one innocent man be punished.” See also 146 U. Pa. L. Rev. 173 (1997). But how do you figure out what value of n you think the legal system should adopt? Easy — just do this set of hypotheticals: 1. Suppose you have a […]

Question for this fifth of November: What does the Fawkes say?

My new post, Privatization and the Constitutional Delegation of Coercive Power in Germany, is up on the Reason Foundation website. Here’s an excerpt: The U.S. Constitution is silent on whether any sort of power can be delegated to private actors. The due process clause protects people from the bias of state actors, whether these state […]

According to the French Republican calendar, tomorrow (which we know as Wednesday, October 23, 2013) is 2 Brumaire CCXXII — and since Brumaire is the second month of the calendar, it’s a date that can be written 2/2/222. Since it’s the second day of the month, the day of the week is Duodi, and the […]

I have a new post up on the Reason Foundation website about Contract Clause challenges to state public pension reform statutes. Here’s an excerpt: Faced with public pension crises, many states have recently enacted pension-reform laws—increasing the rates at which their employees must contribute to their pension funds, reducing or eliminating cost-of-living adjustments, increasing the […]

Does anyone know of some classic (or just good) history or legal-history book about how the American Revolution and constitution(al thought) were influenced by the English civil wars and Glorious Revolution? UPDATE: Right now plausible candidates seem to be Bailyn’s The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and Pocock’s The Machiavellian Moment. Any comments on […]

…must have been the English judge Mr Justice Maule, who used a bigamy case to comment on the embarrassing state of marriage and divorce law in 1845: Prisoner at the bar, you have been convicted before me of what the law regards as a very grave and serious offence: that of going through the marriage […]

A few weeks ago, Jonathan Adler noted the recent D.C. Circuit decision in Ass’n of Am. Railroads v. DOT. I now have a post up on the Reason Foundation website about it. Here’s an excerpt: On July 2, 2013, in Ass’n of American Railroads v. DOT, the D.C. Circuit struck down a delegation of authority […]

Congratulations to Louis George Alexander (1932-2002), author of New Concept English and the Direct English Syllabus and Course Structure! UPDATE: It’s been suggested to me that maybe this is actually all about George Louis Costanza, played by Jason Alexander.

I have a new post up on the Reason Foundation website on a recent Fourth Circuit case, North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners v. FTC, and the FTC order that it upheld. Here’s an excerpt: Federal antitrust law enshrines a public-private dichotomy: unlike the private sector, state governments are completely immune from antitrust suits […]

You know how sometimes different people remember the same event slightly differently? Here’s an example: in 1378, the cardinals were electing a new Pope, and the people of Rome were putting substantial pressure on the cardinals to elect a Roman pope. During this process, Cardinal Orsini went out to talk to the crowd. Here’s how […]

Salimbene di Adam, in the late 13th century, quoted an anonymous source in his Cronica, commenting on the corruption in the Roman Curia: Accusative ad curiam si ceperis ire, Proficis in nichilo, si pergis absque dativo. The “nichilo” is a medieval spelling of “nihilo”, which shows us that they pronounced that “h” in late-13th-century Italy. […]

Last month, on May 7, the Louisiana Supreme Court struck down a school voucher plan. (Jonathan reported on it here.) Now I’ve got a post up about the decision on the Reason Foundation web site. Here’s an excerpt: This May 7, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled 6–1, in Louisiana Federation of Teachers v. Louisiana, that […]

I have a post up on the Reason Foundation’s web site on government contractor immunity. Here’s the beginning: An important question in contracting out is always how the contractors’ legal regime differs from the government’s. There are accountability mechanisms in the private sector, but they generally differ from the ones available in the public sector; […]