Michael Tigar

dave dorkin ddorkin1 at yahoo.com
Mon Jun 17 06:34:31 PDT 2002


Well I'm woking in legal theory and international law (as well in political theory and econ) and I'd say that Scalia and Posner are nothing to write home about. If they were on the left, no one would even take notice. The internal inconsistancies in each are astonishing. In particular, Posner's economic views are simplistic and I wont even go into his pathetic "Public Intellectuals" foray in publishing. The left has real problems but producing intellectuals of that calibre is just not one of them.

--- Justin Schwartz <jkschw at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> >
> >Well, I agree that Tigar ought to be on the S.Ct.
> It's not true, alas,
> >that all we have are mediocrities. Justices Scalia
> and Rehnquist,
> >Judges Posner and Kosinski, and their ilk, are very
> >able. Unfortunately . . . . jks
> >
> >------------
> >
> >You know this gets back to an old argument. How can
> you be brilliant,
> >if you wrote or concurred on Bush v. Gore?
>
> Even the smartest people make dumb calls. Judge
> Posner wrote a book about
> Bush v. Gore, offering the best possible defense of
> it, you could read it.
> ANd you don't have to take my word that he's smarter
> than both of us put
> together. Everyone of every political persuasion
> agrees. Hell, if you
> thought you had an interesting take on the case,
> he'd talk to you about it
> for as long as you could keep his attention. Justice
> Scalia's brilliant too.
> A total creep, but brilliant.
>
> I can't wait to read their
> >wisdom on the patriot act---but it seems extremely
> unlikely to shine.
>
> Scared people make made policy. Justice Frankfurter
> was smart, but he voted
> to uphold the Smith Act convictions in Dennis.
>
> >
> >I mean there is something mentally deficient,
> collectively speaking
> >with a government that impeaches one president over
> a blow job and
> >installs the next against the majority vote of the
> people. Now, there
> >maybe some very able people in such a government,
> but they must be
> >pretty thinly spread.
>
> This is a caricature. The blow job was just an
> excuse, as you know. Clinton
> was widely and deeply hated among many sectors of
> the population for many
> reasons. As for the majority vote thing, the
> Constitution is expressly
> designed to allow allow for the installationb of a
> President on a minority
> vote. The shame of Bush v. Gore is the disgraceful
> and dishonest legal
> reasoning behind the decision, not the outcome per
> se.
>
> >
> >On the Brennan rejection. I don't know the details.
> I haven't read any
> >of Tigar's books, but it must show up in one of
> them somewhere.
>
> I doubt it. I've read it elsewhere. Tigar and Levy's
> Law and the Rise of
> Capitalism, out last year in a new edition, is a
> fine historical survey. Not
> a personal word in it.
>
> jks
>
>
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