Richard Posner has died

(law.uchicago.edu)

51 points | by sebg a day ago ago

10 comments

  • gregw2 a day ago

    Posner had a significant influence on the Microsoft antitrust trial back in 1999-2001, both his legal thinking before the trial and being appointed by the judge in that trial to serve (ultimately unsuccessfully) as a mediator amidst the trial.

    • TZubiri a day ago

      I still don't understand why the IE + Win bundling would be illegal or unethical yet, but Microsoft definitely understood it, because their defense was "we didn't bundle it" rather than "bundling is fine". I wonder how the case would have gone if they just went the second route.

  • xhevahir a day ago

    Posner did more than anyone else to consign law to a branch of economics, specifically economics as understood by the Chicago School.

    • wahern a day ago

      Meh. I don't think Law & Economics has ever become nearly as influential as Scalia's Original Meaning did. Not long ago everybody seemed to admit Scalia's constitutional philosophy had become the new orthodoxy that even liberals (with some distaste) came to embrace. But since his death Scalia's ideas have been so thoroughly and rapidly corrupted (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish?), particularly by conservatives, that I'd argue their influence is barely recognizable today, mostly as a peculiar phase or detour. What remains are his incoherent addendums (i.e. amateur historical exegesis) he tried to develop to make it work when it became popular. Law & Economics will probably remain influential for a much longer time, but only because it'll remain a minority approach or one approach among many in a toolbox.

      If Posner had been elevated to the Supreme Court so a cult could develop then the same thing might have happened, though I think Posner was less doctrinaire so maybe the trajectory would've remained the same.

      • rickydroll a day ago

        > But since his death Scalia's ideas have been so thoroughly and rapidly corrupted (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish?), particularly by conservatives,

        Instead of embrace, extend, extinguish, I would suggest it's judicial Calvinball.

        • stvltvs 21 hours ago

          I suggest that trying to apply Scalia's ideas revealed that they were always incoherent and impractical, and conservative judges are still hoping to patch them up.

  • throwaway81523 a day ago

    Age 87. I had to read some stuff by him a long time ago.

  • zoeysmithe a day ago

    [flagged]

    • method_capital a day ago

      We’d all be so blue If we just listened to you Fascist Barkeeps too. Haiku

  • Gibbon1 19 hours ago

    I just remember that's guys essay explaining why you throw poor people in prison, fine middle class people and wealthy people you don't need to do anything to.

    It'd violate site rules to describe fully what I think of that.