The judicial philosophy of Richard Posner
America’s most prolific judge thought that law was a practical, problem-solving activity
IN a profession marked by pomp and pretence, Richard Posner, who is retiring from the judiciary, is a renegade. For Dick, as he is known to his staff, the tradition of clerks addressing their bosses as “judge” exemplifies the judiciary’s stodginess and resistance to innovation. In his decades as a writer and a jurist, Mr Posner, aged 78, “changed the legal landscape”, says Eric Segall, his collaborator and a law professor at Georgia State University. Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School says Mr Posner has had a “uniquely broad influence” on the legal academy and on America’s courts.
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Gavel down”
From the September 9th 2017 edition
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