Author Archive | Sasha Volokh

I recently read Jan Crawford Greenburg’s Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court. Like co-blogger Orin Kerr, I agree that it’s a “must-read.” Indeed, it is probably the best book about the Supreme Court that I have ever read that was written by a journalist. Unlike […]

It’s a myth that Eskimos have a huge number of words for snow (i.e., many more than we have). However, Eskimologists (not the same as eschatologists) confirm that, at least among the West Greenland Inuit, there’s a single word for “They were wandering about gathering up lots of stuff that smelled like dead fish.”

The linguists at Language Log have been poking fun at a BBC story suggesting that British teens have poor vocabularies and that Britain is becoming a nation of “Vicky Pollards.” The main posts on the subject are here and here; an extra post is here, and for a (very partial) retraction of their original mockery […]

Amazon suggested, based on my purchase and ratings history, that I might enjoy a new edition of The Apostolic Fathers. Sadly, the “look inside” feature doesn’t allow me to see any actual text. But, interestingly, one of the editorial reviews says: “This updated edition of Holmess 1992 Greek-English diglot edition of the Apostolic Fathers is […]

Now that you’ve read all about “sele and meal” from my previous post, here’s some useful advice for the beautiful. (The following is from the same Heaney translation of Beowulf that I quoted in my previous post; this can be found at lines 1931-41. I won’t reproduce the Old English this time, but you can […]

I’ve just been reading Beowulf in the recent verse translation by Seamus Heaney. It’s a bilingual edition, with the Old English on the left and Heaney’s version on the right. On two separate occasions, I’ve noticed a particular expression, “sæl ond mæl.” For instance, in lines 1008-09, we have: … | þa wæs sæl ond […]

Take a look at the Helsinki Complaints Choir. This is along the same lines as my 2003 dream that I was going to put on a Brown v. Board of Education oratorio. (See also the Civil Rights Cantata, a musical setting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Nuremberg Principles, and excerpts from the U.N. […]

For research for a paper I’m working on, I got a book of Monastic Annals from the library. It’s an 1869 volume containing the annals from the Osney monastery and from the Worcester priory. The part I was looking for, in the Worcester priory annals, said the following: (show) MCCXXXI. . . . Tradidimus Herfertone […]

In Richard II, Act 2, Scene 1, Shakespeare has John of Gaunt say: This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, . . . Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it, Like to a tenement or pelting farm: England, bound in with the triumphant sea Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege […]

“Privatization and the Law and Economics of Political Advocacy,” was recently listed on the list of Top Ten recently listed papers in labor law, as well as Top Ten recently listed papers in labor economics (public policy and regulation subsection). (I know what you’re thinking: Labor??? But the paper is heavily about public-sector unions, so […]

For those who are interested in law and music, and the (really!) fascinating question of what musical interpretation has to teach us about statutory interpretation, check out Ian Gallacher‘s Conducting the Constitution: Justice Scalia, Textualism, and the Eroica Symphony. It’s fun — and even contains snippets of score! — but not, I think, altogether fair […]

So we’re going to have a base on the South Pole of the Moon. That can only mean one thing. Moon penguins. (For more, see here, and especially here and here.)

Dahlia Lithwick writes: Outside the court this morning, hundreds of protesters swarm the plaza chanting what sounds to me like: “Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas … bladah yappa lappa doop.” Indeed.

by Daniel Gilbert: [P]sychologists . . . take a vow, promising that at some point in their professional lives they will publish a book, a chapter, or at least an article that contains this sentence: “The human being is the only animal that . . .” . . . Most of us wait until relatively […]

New development in the Georgetown Apostles case — the D.C. zoning administrator says the Apostles are a “fraternity,” not a “religious organization,” because (at least as the WaPo reports) the dictionary says a fraternity is “a group associated for a common purpose, interest or pleasure.” I don’t know, that reasoning seems pretty bootylicious to me….