Volokh was born "Yevhen Volodymyrovych Volokh" on February 29, 1968, to a Jewish family residing in Kiev, Ukraine, which was then still part of the Soviet Union. He immigrated with his family to the United States at the age of seven. Volokh exhibited extraordinary mathematical abilities from an early age. At the age of 9, he was attending university-level mathematics and calculus courses after he was found studying differential equations on his own. When only 10 years 1 month old, he earned a 780 out of a possible 800 on the math portion of what is now called the SAT-I. He is one of the youngest children to have achieved this feat. At the age of 12, he began working as a computer programmer and was enrolled as a sophomore at UCLA. He attended the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics. As a junior at UCLA, he earned $480 a week as a programmer for 20th Century Fox. During this period, Volokh's achievements were featured in an episode of OMNI: The New Frontier, a television series hosted by Peter Ustinov. He graduated from UCLA at age 15 with a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics and computer science. In 1989, Volokh entered the UCLA Law School, graduating in 1992 with a Juris Doctor degree. After law school, he clerked for Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, then for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor of the U.S. Supreme Court. Upon completing his Supreme Court clerkship in 1994, UCLA hired Volokh as a professor of law. He has remained there ever since, and currently holds the position of Gary T. Schwartz Professor of Law.
Politics
Volokh is commonly described as politically conservative or libertarian. In 2012, one commentator described Volokh's politics as "soft libertarian", and Volokh as an "unpredictable libertarian-leaning" writer. In the 2008 presidential election, Volokh supported former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson, saying Thompson had good instincts on legal issues and that he preferred Thompson's positions on the First Amendment and political speech to John McCain's sponsorship of campaign finance reform. Volokh also liked Thompson's position in favor of individual gun ownership. He noted that Thompson "takes federalism seriously, and he seems to have a fairly deep-seated sense that there is a real difference between state and federal power." Volokh is a supporter of same-sex marriage.
Writing
Volokh's article about "The Commonplace Second Amendment", was cited by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's majority opinion in the landmark Second Amendment case of District of Columbia v. Heller, and he has been quoted in the media on gun laws. Volokh advocates campus speech rights, religious freedom, and other First Amendment issues, and has been widely quoted as an expert. He opposes affirmative action, having worked as a legal advisor to California's Proposition 209 campaign. Volokh is a critic of what he sees as the overly broad operation of American workplace harassment laws, including those relating to sexual harassment. On his weblog, Volokh addresses a wide variety of issues, with a focus on politics and law. Volokh's non-academic work has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Slate, and other publications. Since May 2005 he has been a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post.
