Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2014 - (Page 6)

in my own words A Life in Law EUGENE VOLOKH Gary T. Schwartz Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law Publisher and Founder, The Volokh Conspiracy As a teenager, Eugene Volokh envisioned a career as a computer programmer. In fact, when he earned a B.S. in math-computer science from UCLA at age 15, he already had a career as a programmer. But a few years later, another interest brought him back to UCLA-this time, for law school. After earning his J.D., he clerked for Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor of the U.S. Supreme Court before returning to the UCLA School of Law as a faculty member. Volokh teaches courses on constitutional law, tort law, and criminal law, and is a nationally recognized expert on the First and Second Amendments, cyberspace law, and harassment law. He is the founder of the blog The Volokh Conspiracy and has written more than 70 law review articles and over 80 op-eds, as well as a textbook on the First Amendment. Policy, not politics I went into law because I've always been interested in the legal system and in free speech, constitutional law, tort law, and all the other debates we keep hearing about in the news. I was interested in thinking about a wide range of issues, figuring out what I thought was the right thing to do on those issues, and then trying to help implement that. I wanted to be involved in policy making at some level. I wanted to lead a public life: I wanted to file briefs, go on talk shows, testify before subcommittees. Some people who feel this pull become politicians. But being a politician requires a tremendous amount of compromise, and most of it doesn't involve thinking about policy. Getting elected and reelected and getting your agenda enacted requires fundraising, giving speeches in front of voters, and cutting deals with other representatives. 6 imagine I respect people who do that, but I knew that I was not temperamentally suited for it. Issues of law Once upon a time back in the 1760s, Sir William Blackstone wrote a very influential book, Commentaries on the Laws of England. One thing he said was that for every case that turns on a disputed issue of law, a hundred turn on a disputed issue of fact. That was true then and it's true now. Lawyers actually spend very little time talking about what the law ought to be. They spend their time figuring out what the facts are. When I went to law school, I wanted to be a prosecutor. In my first year of law school, I realized that prosecutors do tremendously important jobs but spend very little time focused on legal questions and most of the time rightly focused on factual questions. I realized that the people who get to talk about what the law ought to be-which is what I wanted to do-are mostly law professors. The Volokh Conspiracy I have ideas on a variety of legal subjects and I like to spread those ideas. I have specific, expert knowledge about what I'm writing, and I've always thought that it would be useful to spread it not just to law students through teaching, not just to fellow academics through articles, not just to lawyers through practitioner journals, but to the public at large. Before I started the blog, I wrote several dozen opeds for various publications including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and some smaller publications as well. But an op-ed is a very limiting format: it's about 700 words, it has to be on a subject that is in the news and is of interest to a large range of people, and it has to be presented in a way that a lot of people would find it interesting; otherwise, understandably, the editors wouldn't want to run it. With a blog, I can write about whatever I want to, whenever I want to. If there's something technical that I want to convey to lawyers I can put it out there without thinking, "Oh, wait a minute-what about my non-lawyer subscribers?" We get about 35,000 to 40,000 page views per weekday from probably 15,000 to 25,000 individuals a day. And it's especially rewarding when Jan/Feb 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2014

Big Picture
In My Own Words
Legal Discovery
Order in the Court
Think, Debate, Change the World
Voice of the Students
What Young Inventors Need to Know about Patents
A Practice and a Passion
The Science of Crime Detection
The Medical Examiner Is In
Selected Opportunities and Resources
Wild in the City
Off the Shelf
Word Wise
Exploring Career Options
One Step Ahead
Planning Ahead for College
Students Review
Creative Minds Imagine
Mark Your Calendar
Knossos Games

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2014