Author Archive | Sasha Volokh

I recently discovered a blog devoted entirely to privatization, called, appropriately enough, Privatization Blog. The blog was started several months ago by Dru Stevenson at South Texas College of Law, who now has a handful of co-bloggers. The top article is about my Prison Vouchers article from University of Pennsylvania Law Review, which I blogged […]

By the way, I hope you were all ware of the Ides of March yesterday. I didn’t blog this yesterday because, flush from the Pi Day festivities, I spent all day being ware. Note also that the title of the post is the correct form (even if it was never actually used on the actual […]

Arizona’s Senate Bill 1359 adds the following section to the Arizona Revised Statutes: 12-718.  Civil liability; wrongful birth, life or conception claims; application A.  A person is not liable for damages in any civil action for wrongful birth based on a claim that, but for an act or omission of the defendant, a child or […]

Now is probably as  good a time as any to remind the world of my press release from 16 years ago. The item ended up appearing in The Scientist and was mentioned in Ivars Peterson’s MathTrek, and a quote made into David Blatner’s The Joy of Pi. I vaguely recall there may be a mistake […]

On Friday, I posted the introduction to my latest paper, Prisons, Privatization, and the Elusive Employee-Contractor Distinction. On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I posted following sections. You can find the whole paper here on SSRN. Here’s my conclusion. Thanks again to all the commenters, some of whom I’m answered and some of whom I […]

On Friday, I posted the introduction to my latest paper, Prisons, Privatization, and the Elusive Employee-Contractor Distinction. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I posted following sections. You can find the whole paper here on SSRN. Here’s the last substantive section, on symbolism and expressive concerns. The conclusion should come tomorrow. *     *     * A. Public […]

On Friday, I posted the introduction to my latest paper, Prisons, Privatization, and the Elusive Employee-Contractor Distinction. On Monday and  Tuesday, I posted following sections. You can find the whole paper here on SSRN. Again, thanks to the commenters for participating in the discussion. Some of you may show up in my star footnote. Again, […]

On Friday, I posted the introduction to my latest paper, Prisons, Privatization, and the Elusive Employee-Contractor Distinction. On Monday, I posted the next section. You can find the whole paper here on SSRN. A number of issues have come up in the comments, which I think I should bring up into the text here. By […]

On Friday, I posted the introduction to my latest paper, Prisons, Privatization, and the Elusive Employee-Contractor Distinction, which you can find here on SSRN. Based on reading the comments to the last post, let me make one thing clear: this article is only about the non-empirical arguments against privatization. If you oppose private military companies […]

I’ve just sent out my latest paper, Prisons, Privatization, and the Elusive Employee-Contractor Distinction. [UPDATE: You can find it here on SSRN.] Here’s the introduction: Critics of private prisons often argue that privatization is inappropriate because of inherent differences between the public and private sectors. There are, of course, plenty of arguments that focus on […]

In light of Eugene’s recent post on language matters, I thought I would repost something I put up here back in 2007. Various so-called prescriptivists argue against descriptivism, claiming that descriptivists — because they go by usage — have no basis to correct anyone’s English. Of course this is completely false, and reflects a misunderstanding […]

What should be my next French novel to listen to in audiobook form, The Charterhouse of Parma (Stendhal) [files here] or Swann’s Way (Proust) [files here]? (Both available from Litterature audio.com.)

Dan Markel, an important criminal law scholar, has comments on PrawfsBlawg on my Prison Vouchers article.

I’m running a panel on legal history at the 47th International Congress on Medieval Studies, May 10-13, 2012, in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The title of the panel is Law as Culture: Legal Development and Social Change. The general call for papers is here. The Law as Culture series has been going on at Kalamazoo most years […]

To summarize the Latin for election season, we have: Nominabamini a Romney meaning “y’all were being nominated by Romney”, which you can expand into: “Nominabamini a Romney”, dixi eligenti Pawlenty meaning “‘Y’all were nominating being nominated by Romney’, I said to the person electing Pawlenty.” But my friend Chris Monsour suggests that, in Greek (which […]