Author Archive | Sasha Volokh

I’ve just posted a draft of a recent article, Everything We Know About Faith-Based Prisons, on SSRN. Here’s the abstract: This Article examines everything we know about the effectiveness of faith-based prisons, which is not very much. Most studies can’t be taken seriously, because they’re tainted by the “self-selection problem.” It’s hard to determine the […]

For Pi day, let me plug David Blatner’s The Joy of Pi, a short tome of fun facts about pi, whose main advantage is that it cites me, saying something along the lines of “Sure, memorizing digits of pi isn’t useful, but saying that math has to be useful is like saying that the English […]

I’ve seen various bloggers attack the assertion that Japan’s earthquake will be good for the economy (see, e.g., David Bernstein’s post below) as an example of the broken window fallacy. Now I like the story behind the broken window fallacy as much as the next guy. Yes, GDP might go up, but this only shows […]

I’m holding out for this one.

I agree with Jonathan below that the Constitution (through the spending power) allows Congress to spend tax money to protect the Earth from an asteroid. On the other hand — and at the risk of confirming Mark Kleiman in his belief that libertarians are loopy — I don’t speak for all libertarians, but I think […]

Someone told me a few hours ago that the Superbowl was today, and that apparently the Packers and Steelers are playing. On this occasion, I thought I’d share my unpatriotic attitude toward sports: Whoever wins is presumptively the best team and therefore deserved to win, so (though I would never watch the game) I’m happy […]

I’ve only read one book by Piers Anthony — I believe it was Shade of the Tree (1986), perhaps thirteen years ago. It was very forgettable, probably even bad, but one bit I remember went something like this: He hadn’t had a lot of relationships, and those he had had had been bad. Had had […]

Anyone interested in renting an apartment in glamorous Beverly Hills 90211? It’s a second floor apartment, one block from La Cienega and Wilshire (the corner where the Flynt Publications building is located). 1210 sq.ft. 2 bdrm, 2 bath. Newly remodeled, all new appliances: washer-dryer, dishwasher, stove, built-in-microwave. Rooftop swimming pool, small exercise room. If you’re […]

I recently finished, and greatly enjoyed, Gal Beckerman’s When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry. (See the New Republic book review here.) My family emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1975, and Beckerman’s book is a history of the movement (starting in about 1963) that led to […]

About four and a half years ago, I wrote to the Oxford English Dictionary about the word “absent” in its prepositional sense (“absent X, we cannot do Y”). The word had been listed as “quasi-prepositional,” and the first recorded use was listed as 1944. I found a 1888 use, and questioned why “quasi.” I’m glad […]

I just read this roughly two-week-old NPR story about private prison lobbying for the Arizona immigration law. The idea is this: “NPR spent the past several months analyzing hundreds of pages of campaign finance reports, lobbying documents and corporate records. What they show is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate […]

I imagine there must be a substantial literature on whether sometimes, you should boycott a process you feel is illegitimate rather than trying to ameliorate its effects by participating. For instance, should a democratic political party participate in substantially unfree elections, or should one collaborate with an illegitimate regime? I would appreciate pointers to relevant […]

I’m looking for critiques of regulatory cost-benefit analysis from a libertarian perspective. (Not just yours that you might think up, but articles or books.) Any suggestions? What also might count: A critique of neoclassical economics from a libertarian perspective, for instance along the lines of “people think this perspective is all free-market but it’s not […]

Does anyone have any views on the following Administrative Law casebooks? Koch Jordan Murphy Rogers Healy Krotoszynski Views on other books are fine too, but these are the main two I’m thinking of right now.