Ilya Somin

Ilya Somin is professor of law at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School in Ar- lington, Va. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, and the study of popular political participation and its implications for constitutional democracy. He is the author of Democracy and Po- litical Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is Smarter (revised and expanded second edition, Stanford University Press 2016) and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press 2015), co-author of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (Palgrave Macmillan 2013), and co-editor of Eminent Domain: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). Prof. Somin's work has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Critical Review and others. He has also published articles in a variety of popular press outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, the New York Times Room for Debate website, CNN, USA Today, Newark Star Ledger, Orlando Sentinel, South China Morning Post, Legal Times, National Law Journal and Reason. From 2006-13, he served as co-editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, one of the country's top-rated law and econom- ics journals. In 2008, Prof. Somin served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Zhengzhou University in China. Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Prof. Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School from 2002-03. From 2001-02, he clerked for Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Prof. Somin received his B.A. summa cum laude from Amherst College, his M.A. in political science from Harvard University and his J.D. from Yale Law School.