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Ilya Somin is professor of law at Â鶹ÊÓƵ and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights. 

He is the author of(Oxford University Press, revised and expanded edition, 2022),  (Stanford University Press, revised and expanded second edition, 2016), and  (University of Chicago Press, 2015, rev. paperback ed., 2016). Somin is coauthor of  (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and coeditor of  (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Democracy and Political Ignorance has been translated into Italian and Japanese.

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 New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, the Atlantic, USA Today, Boston Globe, U.S. News and World Report, South China Morning Post, National Law Journal and Reason. He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, the Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, the Guardian, Associated Press, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Al Jazeera, and Voice of America, among other media.

Somin’s writings have been cited in decisions by the United States Supreme Court, multiple state supreme courts and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of Israel. He has testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before the U.S. 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. He writes regularly for the popularlaw and politics blog, now affiliated with Reason magazine (previously affiliated with the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017). From 2006 to 2013, he served as coeditor of the , one of the country’s top-rated law and economics journals.

Somin has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor or scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center; the University of Hamburg, Germany; the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Zhengzhou University in China. He is a university affiliate of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Â鶹ÊÓƵ, and an affiliated faculty member of the George Â鶹ÊÓƵ Institute for Immigration Research. Before joining the faculty at George Â鶹ÊÓƵ, Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-03. In 2001-02, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. 

He earned his BA (summa cum laude) at Amherst College, an MA in political science from Harvard University, and a JD from Yale Law School.