Know Your Enemy - Judge Richard Posner: ‘No value’ in studying the U.S. Constitution

Judge Richard Posner: ‘No value’ in studying the U.S. Constitution

Judge Richard Posner speaking at Harvard University. (Wikipedia) more >

By Jessica Chasmar - The Washington Times - Monday, June 27, 2016

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/27/richard-posner-no-v...

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, just a little more than two centuries, and of course less for many of the amendments),” he wrote. “Eighteenth-century guys, however smart, could not foresee the culture, technology, etc., of the 21st century.”

He added, “let’s not let the dead bury the living.”

Judge Posner, an outspoken opponent of late Justice Antonin Scalia, also blasted “absurd” posthumous encomia for the late conservative.

“I worry that law professors are too respectful of the Supreme Court, in part perhaps because they don’t want to spoil the chances of their students to obtain Supreme Court clerkships,” he wrote. “I think the Supreme Court is at a nadir. The justices are far too uniform in background, and I don’t think there are any real stars among them; the last real star, Robert Jackson, died more than 60 years ago. I regard the posthumous encomia for Scalia as absurd. Especially those of Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow and Justice Elena Kagan.”

David Bernstein, who teaches at Antonin Scalia Law School, formerly George Mason University School of Law, called Judge Posner’s swipe at Scalia “revolting.”

“We all know Posner doesn’t think highly, to say the least, of Scalia. Judging from what Posner writes, the distaste seems to stem primarily from jealousy — Posner thinks he would be a far better Supreme Court Justice than Scalia was, and he resents that as a ‘lower court’ judge, his writings, though highly influential in their own right, will never get the same attention and accolades as Scalia,” Mr. Bernstein wrote.

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Comment by DTOM on June 30, 2016 at 5:05am: Oh look, another one of the 'special ones' - what a surprise

At least the POS - part of his appellation is correct.

This is the man that at the Cybercrime 2020: The Future of Online Crime and Investigations conference held at the Georgetown University Law Center on November 20, 2014:

“If the NSA wants to vacuum all the trillions of bits of information that are crawling through the electronic worldwide networks, I think that’s fine."

“Much of what passes for the name of privacy is really just trying to conceal the disreputable parts of your conduct,”

“Privacy is mainly about trying to improve your social and business opportunities by concealing the sorts of bad activities that would cause other people not to want to deal with you.”

Posner also criticized mobile OS companies for enabling end-to-end encryption in their newest software. “I’m shocked at the thought that a company would be permitted to manufacture an electronic product that the government would not be able to search” he said.

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2855776/judge-give-nsa-unlimited-acc...

As part of a three-judge panel on the 7th Circuit in Chicago, weighing a challenge to the Illinois Eavesdropping Act, which bars the secret recording of conversations without the consent of all the parties to the conversation, Posner was to deliver another memorable quote. At issue was the constitutionality of the Illinois wiretapping law, which makes it illegal to record someone without consent even when filming public acts like arrests in public. Posner interrupted the ACLU after just 14 words, stating, "Yeah, I know. But I’m not interested, really, in what you want to do with these recordings of peoples’ encounters with the police...." Posner continued: “Once all this stuff can be recorded, there’s going to be a lot more of this snooping around by reporters and bloggers.... I'm always suspicious when the civil liberties people start telling the police how to do their business." The 7th Circuit upheld the challenge 2-1, striking down the Eavesdropping Act, but Posner wrote a dissenting opinion.

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20120314175703/http://suffolkmedialaw.c...