Featured Blogger: Eugene Volokh of The Volokh Conspiracy

Comprised of about 20 contributors,  The Volokh Conspiracy focuses on providing thoughtful discussion of newsworthy legal issues.  Blogger Eugene Volokh took some time to chat about the site and its distinctiveness from more political and news-oriented blogs. Make sure to check out @VolokhC on Twitter in addition to visiting the blog!

Q: When and why did you start blogging?

A: April 2002.  I had seen what a great resource some blogs had become – my favorite was Prof. Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit.com – and I thought that my cobloggers and I could also offer something to readers.

Q: How do you think your blog stands out amongst other similarly-themed blogs?

A: We try to use our knowledge about law to explain interesting legal issues, especially ones that are currently in the news.  So ours isn’t a political blog, like some, or a news headline blog.  It focuses instead on news analysis, specifically with regard to contentious legal debates.

Q: What does your family think of your blogging?

A: My brother is a coblogger of mine, so I hope he thinks well of it!

Q: What blogs do you read?

A: Quite a few:  InstaPundit, How Appealing, Language Log, GeekPress, Religion Clause, and others.

Q:  How much time daily do you spend blogging?

A: Hard to say, because it various so much from day to day.  Probably about half an hour per day, on average.

Q: How many times have you redesigned your blog since it started?

A: Only once, I think, when we switched from BlogSpot to WordPress, though we’re planning to do another redesign soon.

Q: How much do you correspond one-on-one with readers?

A: I get on average about 10 messages from readers a day, often with news tips about interesting cases.  Unfortunately, I only rarely have time to respond to more substantive queries or arguments.

Q: What joys did you not expect when you started blogging?  What pains?

A: I expected the satisfaction of conveying my ideas to the public – whether original ideas that I came up with in my legal research, ideas about political and morality, and even simple knowledge about the law that isn’t controversial among lawyers but that laypeople could benefit from having.  I also expected the blog to take up a lot of time.  On both scores, I got what I expected.

Q: What’s something your readers don’t know about you?

A: If I wanted them to know, I probably would have blogged about it.

 

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