Author Archive | Sasha Volokh

Cornell historian Paul Hyams and I are organizing a panel on medieval legal history at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 12-15, 2011. Here’s the call for papers: In the high middle ages, land in medieval Europe was the most important source of political power, social status, and material wealth. Even […]

I’m not sure I understand the bit in Jack Balkin’s post (see also Randy) where he says that “If the Court’s argument about Congress’s intent in McDonald is correct, [i.e., if §1981 already applies the whole Bill of Rights to the states,] it follows that the main holding in McDonald is completely superfluous and the […]

AD 711-718: Muslims conquer Visigothic Spain. AD 2010: Ann Althouse: “Is radical Muslim the new Goth?“

I just got my ballots for Directors of the Harvard Alumni Association and Overseers of Harvard College. I know absolutely nothing about what issues are involved in these positions, nor do I want to spend much time finding out. The candidate statements provide no useful information on the subject. If I don’t get any information […]

My law school friend David Markus wrote on Facebook that, as part of his Passover preparation, he had “charoset marinating.” A Facebook friend of his remarked: “Okay, so I haven’t been awake all that long, and I just spent a minute glancing dullishly at the screen wondering what a ‘marmoset charinating’ entailed.” As a service […]

I’m going to be presenting my paper “Why Do Judges Read Statutes?” at the American Law and Economics Association meeting at Princeton this May 7-8. A preliminary version is here. Anyone have any information on cheap lodgings near campus?

The Emory Law Journal is having its 2010 Randolph W. Thrower Symposium on Thursday, February 11, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., in Tull Auditorium at Emory Law School in Atlanta. The folks at the ELJ say: The annual Randolph W. Thrower Symposium at Emory University School of Law gathers scholars from around the country […]

I thought I’d share with you an op-ed I published on this occasion 13 years ago: History Shows Freedom Drives a Car. (The title was the newspaper editors’, not mine.) UPDATE: Tim Sandefur has further comments here and here.

I’m teaching a class on Legislation & Statutory Interpretation next semester. I’m looking for a 20-30 page reading that I could assign to give students a basic overview of theories of representation. Ideally, it should cover both sides of the debate over things like: whether a legislator should represent his constituents’ interests or the public […]

Cornell medieval historian Paul Hyams and I are organizing a panel called Law as Culture: Lordship, Profit, and Rationality at the 45th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, which will take place May 13-16, 2010. The deadline for submissions is September 15, 2009. Instructions for submission are here. Here’s the […]

I haven’t had time to post lately, but now let me return to my series of posts discussing the background of the Supreme Court’s “fleeting expletives” case from last month, FCC v. Fox Television Stations. Click here to see the whole string of posts, including this one, on a single page, in chronological order. (As […]

This is part of a series of posts discussing the background of the Supreme Court’s “fleeting expletives” case from last week, FCC v. Fox Television Stations. Click here to see the whole string of posts, including this one, on a single page, in chronological order. (As usual, click here to watch George Carlin’s monologue if […]

Since the Supreme Court has granted cert in Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB (see here), I thought I would share a summary of the facts of the case, which I prepared as a study guide for my Administrative Law class at University of Houston: In 2002, following a series of accounting scandals that exposed weaknesses […]