How Judges Think

How Judges Think
By Richard A. Posner


Product Description

A distinguished and experienced appellate court judge, Richard A. Posner offers in this new book a unique and, to orthodox legal thinkers, a startling perspective on how judges and justices decide cases. When conventional legal materials enable judges to ascertain the true facts of a case and apply clear pre-existing legal rules to them, Posner argues, they do so straightforwardly; that is the domain of legalist reasoning. However, in non-routine cases, the conventional materials run out and judges are on their own, navigating uncharted seas with equipment consisting of experience, emotions, and often unconscious beliefs. In doing so, they take on a legislative role, though one that is confined by internal and external constraints, such as professional ethics, opinions of respected colleagues, and limitations imposed by other branches of government on freewheeling judicial discretion. Occasional legislators, judges are motivated by political considerations in a broad and sometimes a narrow sense of that term. In that open area, most American judges are legal pragmatists. Legal pragmatism is forward-looking and policy-based. It focuses on the consequences of a decision in both the short and the long term, rather than on its antecedent logic. Legal pragmatism so understood is really just a form of ordinary practical reasoning, rather than some special kind of legal reasoning.

Supreme Court justices are uniquely free from the constraints on ordinary judges and uniquely tempted to engage in legislative forms of adjudication. More than any other court, the Supreme Court is best understood as a political court.

(20080211)


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Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #2088 in Books
Published on: 2008-04-30
Number of items: 1
Binding: Hardcover
400 pages

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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Posner is unique in the world of American jurisprudence, a highly regarded U.S. appellate judge and a prolific and controversial writer on legal philosophy (The Little Book of Plagiarism). Opinionated, sarcastic and argumentative as ever, Posner is happy to weigh in not only on how judges think, but how he thinks they should think. When sticking to explaining the nine intellectual approaches to judging that he identifies, and to the gap between legal academics and judges, and his well-formulated pragmatic approach to judging, Posner is insightful, accessible, often funny and a model of clarity. When he charges off into longstanding arguments with fellow legal theorists (liberal commentator Ronald Dworkin, for one) or examines doctrinal discrepancies in the opinions of Supreme Court justices, he writes for a far more limited audience. For the record, although Justice Scalia is a favorite target, none of the Supreme Court nine escapes Posner's lethally sharp pen. Posner's two major points—that to a great extent judges make decisions based not on theory but on who they are, their gender, education, class and experiences, and that the Supreme Court is a political court regardless of what theory of constitutional interpretation justices claim—are well worthwhile and deeply rooted in common sense and experience. (Apr.)
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Review
Posner is unique in the world of American jurisprudence, a highly regarded U.S. appellate judge and a prolific and controversial writer on legal philosophy. Opinionated, sarcastic and argumentative as ever, Posner is happy to weigh in not only on how judges think, but how he thinks they should think. When sticking to explaining the nine intellectual approaches to judging that he identifies, and to the gap between legal academics and judges, and his well-formulated pragmatic approach to judging, Posner is insightful, accessible, often funny and a model of clarity. (Publishers Weekly )

From the Back Cover
From the book: Ivan Karamazov said that if God does not exist everything is permitted, and traditional legal thinkers are likely to say that if legalism (legal formalism, orthodox legal reasoning, a "government of laws not men," the "rule of law" as celebrated in the loftiest "Law Day" rhetoric, and so forth) does not exist everything is permitted to judges--so watch out! Legalism does exist, and so not everything is permitted. But its kingdom has shrunk and greyed to the point where today it is largely limited to routine cases, and so a great deal is permitted to judges. Just how much is permitted and how they use their freedom are the principal concerns of this book. . . . I am struck by how unrealistic are the conceptions of the judge held by most people, including practicing lawyers and eminent law professors, who have never been judges--and even by some judges. This unrealism is due to a variety of things, including the different perspectives of the different branches of the legal profession--including also a certain want of imagination. It is also due to the fact that most judges are cagey, even coy, in discussing what they do. They tend to parrot an official line about the judicial process (how rule-bound it is), and often to believe it, though it does not describe their actual practices. This book parts the curtain a bit.


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Customer Reviews
How Judges Think
My god, what a boring book this was. It was written like a law review article and nothing is more boring than a law review article (unless you are doing research). I was hoping for some down to earth conversation about how judges think, something that was an easy read. This was NOT an easy read was just BORING. I didn't even finish it. It was like a lecture on paper.

Posner' most important book for the general public
This may be Posner's most important book; certainly the most likely of his books to be read across the political spectrum. Whoever (Obama) wins (Obama) the next election (Obama) would do well to read this before appointing anyone to the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court.

Truly well written, well thought out, and well worth reading, especially by those of us on the left.

A Must Read for Any Trial Lawyer
Posner brings his esteemed credentials as a circuit judge and authorative author to tackle the ultimate question: how do judges really make their decisions. Is it based strictly on the law and the facts of the case, or, as we are taught in law school, does it sometimes depend on what mood the judge is in.

Posner enlightens naive lawyers who might be tempted to believe that judges decide cases in a vacuum based on which side has submitted the best brief. He also uses his humor and exceptionally clear writing to show how judges reach decisions based on different types of cases.

In particular, every trial lawyer must answer the question, how will the judge influence my case, or how will he decide it if there is a bench trial (no jury). On appeal, the trial lawyer must also factor in how appellate judges will review his/her case. Posner gives invaluable insight in a very well-written and entertaining book.