User:Vipul/Ilya Somin

Ilya Somin is a professor at the George Mason University School of Law, co-editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, blogger for Volokh Conspiracy, and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.

Author
Somin is the author of Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is Smarter., published by Stanford Law Books (a division of Stanford University Press) and scheduled for release on October 2, 2013. In the book, Somin advances a public choice-style case for limited government. Like other public choice theorists, Somin argues that rational ignorance is a major problem for the successful functioning of democracy. In addition, he notes that rational irrationality, as described by Bryan Caplan in The Myth of the Rational Voter, is a problem. Somin departs from traditional public choice theorists by carving out an important place for rational irrationality, while at the same time disagreeing with Caplan's assertion that rational ignorance alone would not be a problem.

Media
Somin has participated many times in the New York Times Room for Debate Forum.

Somin's articles have been published by a number of mainsteam news and opinion outlets in the United States including National Review, Forbes, Los Angeles Times, the Daily Caller, and others.

Somin's blog posts at Volokh Conspiracy, in a number of mainstream news outlets. Somin's blog post about the Supreme Court decision in Fisher v. University of Texas was cited by a number of news outlets. Blog posts by Ilya Somin about the Supreme Court's decisions related to gay marriage (specifically, decisions about the Defense of Marriage Act and California Proposition 8 made in June 2013)  were also widely cited.

In addition, Somin's work on political ignorance has been covered by the Chicago Tribune.