Ilya Somin, "Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter"

With commentary by Michael Pollack

Ilya Somin is a Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, and the study of popular political participation and its implications for constitutional democracy. Professor 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. Somin 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, and USA Today. He has testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. In 2009, he testified on property rights issues at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Somin writes regularly for the popular Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog, affiliated with the Washington Post. From 2006 to 2013, he served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, one of the country’s top-rated law and economics journals.

Michael Pollack graduated summa cum laude from the New York University School of Law in 2011. He clerked for Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the U.S. Supreme Court, and for Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He was also a trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice Federal Programs Branch. He studied political science and economics as an undergraduate, and graduated with highest honors from Swarthmore College. His research interests include local and private government law, property law and land use regulation, administrative law, and the interaction between judicial deference and institutional decisionmaking. He is currently a Lecturer in Law and Bigelow Fellow at the Law School. 

Presented by the Federalist Society on January 26, 2017.