Voting Station

Richard Posner

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Judge

The Resume

    (January 11, 1939- )
    Born in New York, New York
    Federal judge on the United States Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals since 1981 and lecturer at the University of Chicago law school since 1969
    Education: BA in English from Yale in 1959 and JD from Harvard in 1962
    Founded the Journal of Legal Studies in 1972
    Author of over 2,500 opinions, dozens of articles, and almost forty books including; Economic Analysis of Law, (1973) The Economics of Justice, (1981) Law and Literature: A Misunderstood Relation, (1988) The Federal Courts: Challenge and Reform, (1996) Law and Literature, (1998) Law, Pragmatism and Democracy, (2003) How Judges Think, (2008) and The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy in 2010

Why he might be annoying:

    He's a lawyer.
    He's a judge.
    Although as a federal judge he has sworn an oath to uphold the United States Constitution, he dismisses its relevance and has written, 'The notion that twenty-first century can be ruled by documents authored in the eighteenth and mid nineteenth centuries is nonsense.'
    He doesn't support privacy rights, saying that they are used by people with something to hide and once wrote, 'I think privacy is actually overvalued.'
    He has written it should be illegal to videotape the police while they are on the job.
    He supports legalizing the buying and selling babies versus the present system of government run adoption.
    He's written extensively about economics despite having no formal education in the subject.
    He supports the philosophy of Friedrick Nietzsche.
    He favors outlawing hyperlinks and allows for no privacy considerations on the internet.
    He criticizes infighting in the federal judiciary but has openly criticized Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts.
    He has no apparent judicial philosophy, with stances ranging from liberal on abortion and gay marriage to conservative on antitrust laws to outright fascist/communist on privacy rights.

Why he might not be annoying:

    He is really, really, really smart and graduated valedictorian from Harvard Law School and was president the Harvard Law Review.
    Before taking his position at the University of Chicago, he taught at Stanford.
    He is against the drug war.
    He dismisses the concept of animal rights.
    He is against antitrust laws because they increase consumer prices.
    He writes ALL of his own legal opinions.
    He criticizes law schools and their students, saying the large numbers of both dilutes the talent pool of both faculty and students.
    His personal honesty is unquestioned.
    Having been cited almost 8,000 times, he is believed to be the most cited jurist of the twentieth century.
    He and his wife have been married for over fifty years.

Credit: tom_jeffords


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 4 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 12 Votes: 91.67% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 4 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 12 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 16 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 22 Votes: 59.09% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 3 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 23 Votes: 52.17% Annoying