Author Archive | Sasha Volokh

A few weeks ago, I posted on Competition, corporatism, collusion, and antitrust themes in Ilf & Petrov‘s early-Stalinist-era comedy, The Golden Calf. Today, the topic is insurance, moral hazard, and collective action. This scene concerns the residents of a communal apartment, Apt. 3, nicknamed “The Rookery” (Voron’ia slobodka). The inhabitants, described in a previous chapter, […]

Through SSRN, I’ve just come across the article Globalization(s), privatization(s), constitutionalization, and statization: Icons and experiences of sovereignty in the 21st century by Judith Resnik of Yale Law School. Here’s the abstract: What can democratic constitutional states offer that multinational corporations and global governance cannot? One answer, coming from recent decisions by courts in Israel […]

Back in January, I announced the anniversary of Lenin’s death. Today, an even more special occasion: the sixtieth anniversary of the deaths of both Stalin and Prokofiev. Prokofiev, who had left Russia for America in 1918, returned to Russia in 1936, and subsequently had a troubled relationship with Stalin and the Soviet regime (see also […]

It turns out there’s a 2006 case from the European Court of Human Rights called Volokh v. Ukraine. (It’s labeled Volokhy v. Ukraine in the linked document, but that’s just the Ukrainian plural of Volokh, so it’s like Volokhs v. Ukraine — cf. our own Cohens v. Virginia — and usual American citation practices would […]

In my copious spare time, I occasionally amuse myself by doing some physics problems (out of this book). Sometimes a problem expresses a time in years, and since it’s usually a good idea to convert times into seconds, one sometimes has to figure out how many seconds there are in a (365-day) year. Fortunately, someone […]

For those of you who are in Greenville, S.C., I’m speaking to the lawyers’ Federalist Society chapter on Minneci v. Pollard and constitutional torts at noon tomorrow (Thursday) at the Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, PLLC offices.

Speaking of the antitrust state action doctrine (see my previous posting here and my major blog post here), Scott Weese recently published an article called Eminent Need: Proposing a Market Participant Exception for Municipal Parker Immunity in the Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal. Here’s his abstract: A township is using its eminent domain […]

In my post on the Supreme Court’s recent antitrust case, FTC v. Phoebe Putney, on the Reason Foundation’s web site (see also here and here), I noted that “the FTC has been grousing against the scope of the state action exemption for years.” As evidence of this grousing, here’s the Report of the State Action […]

Those of you who have been interested in my postings on FTC v. Phoebe Putney might be interested in a recent student note in the Columbia Law Review, Antitrust Immunity Up In Smoke: Preemption, State Action, And The Master Settlement Agreement, by Matthew McDonald. Here’s the abstract: In antitrust law, the state action doctrine allows […]

I’ve been posting about the FTC v. Phoebe Putney antitrust case (released Tuesday) here, here, and here. Now I’ve written up the opinion and its doctrinal background in a post on the Reason Foundation’s web site. Here’s an excerpt: Supreme Court Antitrust Ruling Supports Public-Private Neutrality, Reduces Barriers to Privatization On February 19, 2013, the […]

My post on the FTC v. Phoebe Putney antitrust case is coming soon, perhaps tomorrow. Meanwhile, speaking of antitrust, I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Ilf & Petrov‘s The Golden Calf, a comedy that takes places roughly at the time of the NEP in the Soviet Union. In chapter 3, I ran across the […]

The FTC v. Phoebe Putney antitrust case, which I’ve been posting about here and here, has just been released. I’ll have a post up about it in the coming days.

On Friday, I posted about FTC v. Phoebe Putney Health System, the interesting upcoming case about the “state action” exception to antitrust law. Today, I’ll discuss an interesting amicus brief in the case, that of a bunch of economists; among the names that caught my eye (because I know something of their work from having […]

On November 26, the Supreme Court heard arguments in FTC v. Phoebe Putney Health System, Inc., which means that an opinion should be coming down the pike fairly soon. I’m interested in this case for three reasons: (1) it’s relevant to antitrust, which is an interest of mine (I studied Industrial Organization in grad school […]

Speaking of the Pope, what are your favorite Catholic science fiction books? I don’t mean just books written by Catholics, nor do I mean books where the Catholic church plays a plot role (like the Hyperion series), but books with a strong Catholic-related theme, like A Canticle for Leibowitz. Bonus points if canon law makes […]