Eugene Volokh (; born February 29, 1968, as Yevhen Volodymyrovych Volokh ()) is an American legal scholar known for his scholarship in American constitutional law and libertarianism as well as his prominent legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy. Volokh is regarded as an expert on the First Amendment. He is the Gary T. Schwartz Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law and is an affiliate at the law firm Schaerr Jaffe. Early life and education Volokh was born to a Jewish family residing in Kyiv, Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. He emigrated 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. Career After law school, Volokh 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. As of 2018, he also held the position of Gary T. Schwartz Professor of Law, and was an academic affiliate at the law firm Mayer Brown. As of 2023, he was an affiliate of trial and appellate law firm Schaerr Jaffe. 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.