Free Republic

I met justice William Douglas, the longest-serving member of the Supreme Court, when I was clerking for Justice William Brennan. Douglas struck me as cold and brusque but charismatic--the most charismatic judge (well, the only charismatic judge) on the Court. Little did I know that this elderly gentleman (he was sixty-four when I was a law clerk) was having sex with his soon-to-be third wife in his Supreme Court office, that he was being stalked by his justifiably suspicious soon-to-be ex-wife, and that on one occasion he had to hide the wife-to-be in his closet in order to prevent the...

Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals announced his retirement Friday afternoon, affording President Donald Trump the opportunity to replace a legal titan on the Chicago-based federal appeals court. Posner subscribes to a method of judging called “pragmatism,” which seeks to balance the equities of each case and conform judicial rulings to the social, political, and economic arrangements of the times. He touted his commitment to pragmatism in announcing his retirement.

Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner sees “absolutely no value” in studying the U.S. Constitution because “eighteenth-century guys” couldn’t have possibly foreseen the culture and technology of today. In a recent op-ed for Slate, Judge Posner, a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, argued that the original Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the post–Civil War amendments “do not speak to today.” “I see absolutely no value to a judge of spending decades, years, months, weeks, day, hours, minutes, or seconds studying the Constitution, the history of its enactment, its amendments, and its implementation (across the centuries — well,...

Before he was Donald Trump's vice-presidential pick, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) took a politically popular, if legally questionable, stand: There would be no Syrian refugees resettled in his state, not after the attacks in Paris last fall carried out in part by Islamist terrorists who masqueraded as Syrian migrants. On the day before the vice-presidential debate, his biggest moment as Trump's running mate, Pence's stand on Syrian refugees received a likely fatal blow: A federal appeals court ruled Monday that Pence has no legal authority to stop the resettlement of these refugees in Indiana.

States that refuse to help resettle Syrian refugees are guilty of illegal discrimination, a federal appeals court ruled Monday, delivering a judicial rebuke to GOP vice presidential nominee Mike Pence, who as Indiana’s governor had tried to halt Syrian resettlement. Judge Richard Posner, writing for the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, said there’s no evidence that Syrians are more dangerous, and he said even if they are, allowing Indiana to refuse to resettle them would only foist the problem onto neighboring states. “Federal law does not allow a governor to deport to other...

According to 7th Circuit Judge Richard Posner in a post published to Slate, U.S. judges should stop studying the Constitution. “I see absolutely no value to a judge of spending decades, years, months, weeks, day, hours, minutes, or seconds studying the Constitution, the history of its enactment, its amendments, and its implementation,” Posner argued. “Eighteenth-century guys, however smart, could not foresee the culture, technology, etc., of the 21st century,” he continued. “Which means that the original Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the post–Civil War amendments (including the 14th), do not speak to today.”

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has told Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan for the last time that she MUST honor the Constitution of the United States by doing away with her state’s ban on the concealed carry of firearms. It was back in December of last year that a 3 judge panel of the Court found the Illinois law banning concealed carry to be unconstitutional. “The Supreme Court has decided that the [2nd] amendment confers a right to bear arms for self-defense, which is as important outside the home as inside,” wrote 7th Circuit Judge Richard Posner, paraphrasing the...

A conservative federal judge appointed by Ronald Reagan said in an interview published Thursday that the Republican Party has gone “goofy” and that “these right-wingers who are blasting [Chief Justice John] Roberts are making a very serious mistake.” “I mean, what would you do if you were Roberts?” Judge Richard Posner, of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, told NPR. “All of a sudden you find out that the people that you thought were your friends have turned against you, they despise you, they mistreat you, they leak to the press, what do you do? Do you become more...

Of all the misguided schemes put forth lately to save newspapers (micropayments! blame Google!), the one put forth by Judge Richard Posner has to be the most jaw-dropping. He suggests that linking to copyrighted material should be outlawed. No, Posner does not work for the Associated Press (which also has some strange ideas on linking). He is (normally) considered to be one of the great legal minds of our time. Posner is a United States Court of Appeals judge in Chicago and legal scholar who was once considered a potential Supreme Court nominee. He is someone who should know better....

A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of ’08 and the Descent into Depression, by Richard Posner (Harvard University Press, 368 pp., $23.95) Coming from a leading free-marketer, Richard Posner’s new book may look at first glance like a confession of intellectual defeat. Actually, it is closer to healthy self-criticism. Capitalism, writes Posner, should be not rejected but repaired. Posner has joined the still-modest number of scholars who try to understand their mistakes without jettisoning their entire system of beliefs. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan became a member of this group after publicly admitting some months back that he had...

A TOP-RANKING US judge has stunned a conference of Australian judges and barristers in Chicago by advocating secret trials for terrorists, more surveillance of Muslim populations across North America and an end to counter-terrorism efforts being "hog-tied" by the US constitution. Judge Richard Posner, a supposedly liberal-leaning jurist regarded by many as a future US Supreme Court candidate, said traditional concepts of criminal justice were inadequate to deal with the terrorist threat and the US had "over-invested" in them. His proposed "big brother" solutions flabbergasted delegates at the Australian Bar Association's biennial conference, where David Hicks's lawyer, Major Michael Mori,...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Judge Richard A. Posner was in town for a public appearance the other night, and as he is a leading candidate for the title World's Foremost Authority, I thought I would stop by the famous old Willard Hotel to see what he had to say about the 9/11 Commission Report and its legislative by-product, the Intelligence Report Act. Supposedly the legislation improves the capacity of our intelligence community in this time of terror attacks worldwide. Posner, a federal judge and lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, writes on a broad range of public matters. He...

CHICAGO - A federal appeals court on Wednesday refused to give independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader a spot on the Illinois ballot, saying his lawsuit against state election officials who turned him down came too late. The courts acted quickly on his suit, but it came so late that "Nader created a situation in which any remedial order would throw the state's preparations for the election into turmoil," a three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said. The decision was a boon to Democrats who expect their presidential nominee, John Kerry, to win Illinois but were worried...

The New York Times August 29, 2004 The 9/11 Report: A Dissent By RICHARD A. POSNER THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. Illustrated. 567 pp. W. W. Norton & Company. Paper, $10. The idea was sound: a politically balanced, generously financed committee of prominent, experienced people would investigate the government's failure to anticipate and prevent the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Had the investigation been left to the government, the current administration would have concealed its own mistakes and blamed its predecessors. This is not a criticism of...