A California legal scholar well known for his full-throated defense of First Amendment issues has been selected for a prestigious prize honoring just that.
Eugene Volokh, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor emeritus at UCLA School of Law, where he taught First Amendment law, copyright law, tort law, and firearms regulation policy for 30 years, was chosen as the 2026 recipient of the $50,000 McLellan Prize for advancing free speech and expression.
“Eugene Volokh is one of the most prolific and influential legal scholars of our time,” a news release states, pointing out that in addition to his work at UCLA and Stanford, he is editor-in-chief and founder of the Journal of Free Speech Law and is also known for his legal blog, the Volokh Conspiracy, which often tackles and defends Constitutional rights.
Volokh was born in the USSR and his family emigrated to the U.S. when he was seven, according to the news release from the Russell Kirk Center, which administers the award.
By age nine he was attending university-level mathematics courses and he graduated from UCLA at 15 with a degree in mathematics and computer science, it states. Volokh graduated from UCLA Law School in 1992, and clerked for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court.
He also authored the books “The First Amendment and Related Statutes” and “Academic Legal Writing” as well as over 100 law review articles, the release states.
“His work has been cited by opinions in twelve Supreme Court cases and over 400 court opinions in total, as well as over 12,000 academic works indexed in Google Scholar. Three of his academic articles, for instance, were cited by the majority opinion in the landmark Second Amendment decision in D.C. v. Heller,” it states, adding Volokh has also filed briefs, primarily amicus briefs, in more than 200 cases and argued over 40 First Amendment appellate cases in state and federal courts throughout the country.
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