Entries associated with the tag "Richard Posner":

Not only does Judge Richard Posner define plagiarism in his little book thereon, he explains at least one reason why the concept changes and evolves. Writers used to be supported by patrons (usually wealthy aristocrats), who would know them personally, so it didn't hurt them much if someone copied their work. Plagiarism became more of an issue once writers came to depend upon sales to a mass market. Those customers didn't know them and might well be duped into paying someone who'd simply copied their work. "Creative imitation cannot have as capacious a scope or as positive a connotation in a modern commercial society of commodified intellectual works as it did in Shakespeare's time."

Is it possible that the desire to downplay plagiarism or even define it out of existence -- which took most of the stage time at the Art Institute recently, as I report in this week's Reader -- is somehow connected with nostalgia for an earlier, less modern, less individualistic era?

Federal appellate judge Richard Posner's decision-making is way too conservative (as in unfair) for my taste, but he's no wingnut. Consider this entry in the Becker/Posner Blog: "The global-warming skeptics are beginning to sound like the people who for so many years, in the face of compelling evidence, denied that cigarette smoking had serious adverse effects on health." (Still in denial is Chicago's own "belief tank," the Heartland Institute.)

What to do? Posner notes that many experts are focused on the long-term consequences of warming, but it's very difficult to decide what we should spend to avert a catastrophe a century or more away. Regardless of the outcome of that argument, he urges immediate action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions now, even though it's expensive. He lists three reasons:

"The first is that global warming is already imposing costs, and these will probably increase steadily in the years ahead. Discounting does not much affect those costs. They may well be great enough to warrant remedial action now.

"The second argument for incurring heavy expenditures today to reduce global warming is that there is a small risk of abrupt, catastrophic global warming at any time, and a small risk of a huge catastrophe can compute as a very large expected cost.  [Those who can read as fast as Posner can write will recognize this argument from his 2004 book Catastrophe: Risk and Response.]  ...

Maybe he should be in Congress instead of on the court?

In a split decision last week in Chicago's U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Judge Richard Posner OK'd Indiana's new law requiring voters to show photo IDs in all elections. The judges split 2-1, with Judge Terence Evans dissenting. Both opinions are brief and to the point if you want to read the whole thing (PDF).

The judges had to weigh which was more important: voter fraud perpetrated by people who show up and claim to be someone they're not (thus diluting the votes of legitimate voters), or the disenfranchisement of people who won't vote because it's a hassle to get up-to-date photo IDs.

Indiana's law would make sense if there'd been lots of outright voter fraud, but the state offered no such evidence. It would make no sense if the law discouraged many people from voting at all, but the plaintiffs offered no good evidence on that either. How did Posner deal with this situation?

First, he mocked and minimized the possiblity that the law might disenfranchise legitimate voters: "There is not a single plaintiff who intends not to vote because of the new law.... The motivation for the suit is simply that the law may require the Democratic Party and the other organizational plaintiffs to work harder to get every last one of their supporters to the polls."

But when he turned to the other side -- the failure to provide evidence of fraud that would make the new law necessary -- Posner made a series of excuses for the state. Never been any prosecutions for voter fraud? Well, it's hard to do. Not even any reports of fraud? Well, maybe everyone was looking the other way, and, um, there's fraud other states.

At this point he might have suggested that the motivation for the law was simply that Indiana's Republican legislators and Republican governor wanted to suppress turnout among likely Democrats. But, most uncharacteristically, he had nothing to say.

(Additional thoughts at Rick Hasen's Election Law. According to this newspaper account, the plaintiffs may request a rehearing before the entire court.)

If you failed to show up despite our notification, Daniel Drezner links to the lightly edited transcript of Richard Posner's avatar's appearance on Second Life and excerpts some of his favorite parts:

"Suddenly, a large wooden cube materializes in the middle of the auditorium, blocking Judge Posner from the audience--an apparent griefer attack on the event, or the Judge himself.

"[Posner]: That's an example of the kind of threat that worries me--a huge box marching through an amphitheatre."

I actually know someone who'd be delighted to send a postcard made largely of dried squid—and according to Pink Tentacle, such objects may now be available from Susami, Wakayama prefecture, Japan.

The avatar of Chicago's Seventh Circuit Federal Appellate Court Judge Richard Posner will be interviewed on Second Life December 7 about his new book, Not A Suicide Pact, according to Wagner James Au at New World Notes. Maybe Judge Posner can get on the Supreme Court there.

Chicago lawyering is being increasingly offshored, writes Moushumi Anand in the Chi-Town Daily News, with the help of firms like Mindcrest ("a pioneer in legal outsourcing since 2001"). "An outsourcing firm in India charges between $25 and $90 an hour for work done by a attorney. Similar work done by an attorney in the United States can cost between $120 and 250."

Too much spare time? News Trust has a brand-new site where you can nominate, read, and evaluate news stories— a kind of social bookmarking site with a side of journalism critique. (Hat tip to Dan Gillmor at the Center for Citizen Media.)

Judge Richard Posner is surprisingly skeptical about the late Milton Friedman's theories. He writes at the Becker-Posner Blog:

"I think his belief in the superior efficiency of free markets to government as a means of resource allocation, though fruitful and largely correct, was embraced by him as an article of faith and not merely as a hypothesis. I think he considered it almost a personal affront that the Scandinavian nations, particularly Sweden, could achieve and maintain very high levels of economic output despite very high rates of taxation, an enormous public sector, and extensive wealth redistribution resulting in much greater economic equality than in the United States. I don't think his analytic apparatus could explain such an anomaly.

"I also think that Friedman, again more as a matter of faith than of science, exaggerated the correlation between economic and political freedom. A country can be highly productive though it has an authoritarian political system, as in China, or democratic and impoverished, as was true for the first half-century or so of India's democracy and remains true to a considerable extent, since India remains extremely poor though it has a large and thriving middle class." 

Read the whole thing, and the intelligent criticism in the comments. The idea that good things go together dies hard, and Posner's a good person to drive a stake through its heart.

Dean Baker has a slightly more barbed personal reminiscence:

"About a decade ago, I stumbled into the wrong session at the American Economics Association Convention. Milton Friedman was . . . pointing out that many measures of considerable economic importance often get little scrutiny. The particular example I remember him discussing was the Americans With Disabilities Act, which requires businesses to make reasonable efforts to make their places of business accessible to employees and customers with disabilities. I stayed long enough to hear Mr. Friedman argue that this act imposed enormous costs on 'normal people.'"

Glenn Greenwald listens to Chicago federal appellate judge Richard Posner's interview with Glenn and Helen Reynolds so we don't have to:

"Posner's core argument [in his new book Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency] is that the threat of terrorism is so 'very great' and 'very novel'--'sui generis'--that the Constitution must be intepreted differently than it ever was before in order to deal with the threat (there is no transcript available--all quotes are from my listening to the podcast). Posner repeatedly claims in the interview that 'the Constitution is flexible' and he even says that it is a 'loose garment, not shrink wrap.' Thus, we 'have to interpret the Constitution in a way to enable us to cope with unanticipated dangers.'

"Posner's relentless characterization of the Constitution as this amorphous, evolving document which must be shaped and molded by political events led Reynolds to ask . . . isn't Posner advocating the very theory of a 'living, breathing Constitution' which conservatives have long claimed to despise, even consider tyrannical?

"Posner paused and stuttered quite a bit after being asked that question, and then admitted, quite astonishingly, that he 'hadn't thought about that' painfully obvious point before. But he then told Reynolds that he's 'right' about the fact that he, Posner, has an elastic view of the Constitution--that it is a 'flexible' document. Posner then justified that view by essentially denegrating the Constitution as obsolete and useless in light of this grave new threat. The Constitution is nothing but 'an 18th century document,' Posner complained, and 'the notion that [the Founders] had the answers to 20th century problems . . . is, I think, wrong and dangerous.' "

It looks like the prolific judge's garment of intellectuality may be working loose, too.

And conservatives who have cried out for years against "activist judges"--where are they now?

Over at the Becker-Posner Blog, Seventh Circuit Federal Appellate Judge Richard Posner declines to comment on the constitutionality of Chicago's new big-box minimum wage.  (That question is likely to wind up in his in box one of these years.)  Meanwhile, he makes some interesting admissions, in his characteristically Olympian way.  Final paragraph: 

"At the current minimum wage in Illinois of $7.75 an hour, an employee who works 2000 hours a year (a 40-hour week with two weeks of annual vacation) and is paid the minimum wage earns only $15,500 a year. This is a pittance,"

You're coming in loud and clear, judge. 

"though if the minimum-wage employee's spouse is employed at a significantly higher wage, the family's income may not be at a hardship level. Similarly, the minimum-wage employee may be an elderly person who receives social security and Medicare and may have a company pension in addition."

Also true for some. 

"These possibilities show that minimum wage laws, even if they had no disemployment effects, would be a clumsy instrument for combating poverty. A better approach than raising the mininum wage would be increasing the earned-income tax credit (negative income tax), which is a method of increasing the earnings of marginal workers without confronting their employer with a higher cost of labor and thus inducing the employer to discharge those workers whose marginal product is lower than the minimum wage."

Illinois has a state EITC. 

"But this would be difficult for an individual city or even state to do; it would require federal action."

Gee, I wonder which party would be more likely to enact this.  But, further deponent sayeth not.