Somin Named B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at Cato Institute

Ilya Somin
Ilya Somin

Anastasia Boden and Ilya Somin Join the Cato Institute’s Legal Studies Department

Cato Institute News Release
January 6, 2023
Media Contact: (202) 789‐5200

Washington, D.C. — The Cato Institute welcomes Anastasia Boden as the director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies. She is a former senior attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation.

In addition, Professor Ilya Somin, a long‐time Cato Institute adjunct scholar, has been named the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies. He will also continue his role as a professor of law at George Mason’s Antonin Scalia Law School. Somin succeeds Roger Pilon, who held the Simon Chair for nearly 25 years.

At Pacific Legal Foundation, Boden served as a senior attorney and program leader for the Equality and Opportunity Project as well as the “Competitor’s Veto” Initiative, where she worked to end Certificate of Need Laws. She also created and co‐hosted the podcast Dissed, which examines Supreme Court dissents through a critical, scholarly, and often humorous lens. Boden has extensive experience litigating under the Fourteenth Amendment, including its promises of economic liberty and equality before the law. She served as a legal associate at Cato after graduating from Georgetown Law in May 2011.

“We are thrilled to have Anastasia Boden as the new director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies,” said Clark Neily, Cato’s senior vice president for Legal Studies. “I have admired Anastasia’s work for years, and I can say from firsthand experience that she combines a razor‐sharp legal mind with a passion for liberty, a wealth of experience, and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy in defense of individual rights.”

Further augmenting Cato’s team as the new Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies, Professor Ilya Somin is the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom and Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is Smarter. He received his B.A. from Amherst College, M.A. from Harvard University, and J.D. from Yale Law School. In 2002‐2003 Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School.

Somin’s scholarly work focuses on federalism, immigration, eminent domain and property rights, and political knowledge and participation. His legal commentary can be found in the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and more.

Cato President and CEO Peter Goettler noted that, “Professor Somin is among legal academia’s most thoughtful, principled and persuasive exponents of limited government constitutionalism. We are honored to have him as the new Simon Chair, and look forward to working together to protect liberty, challenge overweening government, and defend the rule of law.”