Alexander "Sasha" Volokh is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Houston Law Center. He earned his B.S. from UCLA in 1993, and his J.D. in 2003 and Ph.D. in economics in 2004 from Harvard University. He clerked for Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit from 2004 to 2005, and for Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Samuel Alito from 2005 to 2006. From 2006 to 2008 he was a Visiting Associate Professor at Georgetown University Law Center. His interests include law and economics, administrative law and the regulatory process, environmental law and policy, and legal history. His current research topics include the private management of government services, medieval English property law, and statutory interpretation. Starting in Fall 2009, he will be an Assistant Professor at Emory Law School.
Law Review Articles
Choosing Interpretive Methods: A Positive Theory of Judges and Everyone Else, NYU Law Review (2008)
In this Article, I propose a theory of how rational, ideologically motivated judges might choose...
Privatization and the Law and Economics of Political Advocacy, Stanford Law Review (2008)
A common argument against privatization is that private providers will self-interestedly lobby to increase the...
The Appeal (with Alex Kozinski), Michigan Law Review (2005)
The late Josef K., a thirty-something male, claims that “someone must have slandered [him], for...
The Pitfalls of the Environmental Right to Know, Utah Law Review (2002)
Would you want your family to live near a plant containing acetone, acetaldehyde, methyl butyrate,...
A Brief Guide to School-Violence Prevention, Journal of Law & Family Studies (2000)
Students shouldn’t shoot one another. So far, everyone seems to agree. Everyone also seems to...
Peer-Reviewed Articles
Judicial Reform (with Juan Carlos Botero, Rafael La Porta, Florencio López-de-Silanes, and Andrei Shleifer), World Bank Research Observer (peer-reviewed) (2003)
Working Papers
Property Rights and Contract Form in Medieval Europe, revise & resubmit, Am. L. & Econ. Rev. (2009)
This article contributes not only to to the literature on medieval economic history but also...
Privatization, Free Riding, and Industry-Expanding Lobbying, Georgetown Law and Economics Research Paper No. 969789 (2008)
Critics of privatization have argued that privatization distorts the political system by giving private contractors...
Privatization and the Effectiveness of Monitoring Agencies, Georgetown Law and Economics Research Paper No. 982146 (2007)
Contributions to Books
Externalities, Encyclopedia of Libertarianism (2008)
Better That Ten Guilty Men..., Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (2006)
Student Writing
Civil Procedure—Class Actions—Seventh Circuit Reverses Lower Court's Approval of Class Action Settlement, Citing Evidence of Collusion.—Reynolds v. Beneficial National Bank, 288 F.3d 377 (7th Cir. 2002), Harvard Law Review (2003)
Class actions have the potential to increase the efficiency of litigation by eliminating duplicative lawsuits...
The Supreme Court, 2001 Term—Leading Cases: Takings Clause—Regulatory Takings—Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, Inc. v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, 122 S. Ct. 1465 (2002), Harvard Law Review (2002)
In 1922, Justice Holmes invented regulatory takings jurisprudence by announcing that “if regulation goes too...
Developments in the Law—The Law of Prisons: III. A Tale of Two Systems: Cost, Quality, and Accountability in Private Prisons, Harvard Law Review (2002)
Private prisons are on the rise. Privately operated juvenile facilities—mostly community-based group homes or halfway...