JKSCHW at aol.com: Re: Michael Pugliese <debsian at pacbell.net>: Re: Re: Posner and Gates

Marta Russell ap888 at lafn.org
Thu Dec 2 07:25:13 PST 1999


Justin Schwartz - who must be a libertarian himself, could not be more wrong, to insinuate that Posner does not impose his belief system on cases. He has consistently ruled for business and the interest of business every opportunity he gets. Judges and lawyers who come from the opposite pole - have written excellent criticisms on Posner. These can be found in law journals. See for instance, Valparaiso University Law Review Vol. 24, Robin Paul Malloy (winter 1990).

marta russell

James Farmelant wrote:


> --------- Begin forwarded message ----------
> From: JKSCHW at aol.com
> To: farmelantj at juno.com
> Cc: JKSCHW at aol.com
> Subject: Re: Michael Pugliese <debsian at pacbell.net>: Re: Re: Posner and
> Gates
> Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 22:18:56 EST
> Message-ID: <0.6d428034.25773f20 at aol.com>
>
> In a message dated 12/1/99 3:05:56 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> farmelantj at juno.com writes:
>
> << Posner is damn prolific, pieces in The New Republic and National =
> Review pretty frequently. Tons of books, "Sex and Reason,"(!!!) and one
> =
> on impeachment that just came out.
> Just checked at amazon.com, the guy has over a dozen books at least. =
> Anybody in law school or
> a law school professor, on lbo list, to summarize Posner and the law and
> =
> econ folks to us non-lawyer types? >>
>
> Jim, you can post this to LBO. in fact, send me the sign-on message and
> I'll
> sign up again.
>
> I was a judicial law clerk on the Seventh Circuit last year for Judge
> Walter
> Cummings and then for Judge Ilana Rovner. My office was next to Chief
> Judge
> Posner's, so apart from being pretty familiar with his judicial opinions
> and
> scholarly writings, I know him personally moderately well. He's not easy
> to
> summarize. He's extraordinary brilliant, seeing points in a moment that
> take
> other people years. He writes fluently and well, sometimes glibly, but
> not
> nearly as glibly as you'd expect for someone who writes as much as he
> does.
> He writes all his own opinions, which is unusual for judge; only two
> other
> judges of the 7th Cir. do that as far as I know. This is in addition to a
>
> book a year and heaps of scholarly articles. Posner is a Republican, a
> Reagan
> appointee, but not doctrinaire. He thinks things through himself and you
> cannot tell where he is going to come out. I think he is a fine judge as
> a
> judge, apart from his scholarly attainments. Certainly his opinions are a
>
> delight to read, as opposed to the usual product. He can be nasty to
> litigants.
>
> As far as the "econ and law" stuff goes, there are really two Posners.
> One is
> a widely read, cultivated, funny scholar of broad humanistic learning who
> can
> write lots of interesting stuff about law and literature, including
> literary
> criticism on Homer or Kafka, discussions of Icelandic society in the
> middle
> ages or the silliness of repressive sex laws--anything that crosses his
> mind.
> In the area I was trained before I became a lawyer, analytical
> philosophy,
> Posner can hold his own with the professionals. Wearing this hat he is
> America's leading legal theorist of pragmatism, which makes him a good
> guy in
> my book. I can read several hundred pages of this Posner at a stretch
> without
> finding anything on which I have serious disagreements.
>
> Then there E&L, an approach to law which Posner is in no small part
> responsible for, which helped him attain the heights he now commands, but
>
> which occupies a much smaller part of his horizon than it might seem in
> the
> minds of the educated public. The economic analysis of the law is not
> easily
> summarized--Posner has a book on it (surprise!). Basically it involves
> analyzing legal problems about what rule to adopt or to apply in a case
> from
> the perspective of mainstream economics and choosing the rule that
> promotes
> efficiency as mainstream economists understand the notion. Some writers,
> not
> so much Posner, argue that this is what judges in fact do. Posner argues
> that
> in broad classes of cases--contracts, torts, antitrust, it is what they
> should do.
>
> So far so good, maybe: there are areas where this is a sensible approach,
>
> e.g., corporate law. Maybe antitrust, although I can argue the other side
>
> there too. The problem is of course economic imperialism, the
> inappropriate
> application of economics to kinds of cases where it doesn't belong or the
>
> swallowing up of noneconomic concerns about justice (for example) in the
> economic analysis. (E&L might be looked at as vulgar Marxism for the
> right
> wing, a sort of economic reductionism.) Posner has advocated--in
> theory--a
> very imperialistic extension of E&L, has written a book called Sex and
> Reason, for example, applying economic analysis to sex in ways that are
> clever, shocking, and wrong. He notoriously defended the proposition that
> the
> good to be maximized in economic analysis is wealth-maximization, never
> mind
> about maldistribution. There's an argument that the market will fix
> maldistribution, but never mind that.
>
> This is all academic theory, good clean fun in the journals. Mostly it
> does
> not infect Posner's interpretation of the law in his opinions and it does
> not
> get in the way of his real contributions to humane learning. It has a
> harmful
> effect in legitimating rigidities that Posner is not susceptible to in
> the
> work of lesser judges and scholars.
>
> Justin Schwartz, Esq.
> --------- End forwarded message ----------
>
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