Judge Richard Posner has been on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit since 1981 and was its chief judge for seven terms, from 1993 to 2000. A graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Law Review, Posner clerked for Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. during the 1962-63 term and served as a deputy solicitor general under Thurgood Marshall. His career has included academia (he still teaches at the University of Chicago Law School) and authorship on a wide variety of legal topics; has placed him in the forefront of change on various social fronts; and has earned him great respect as a thinker and judge.
We therefore note our concern about Posner’s frequent public criticism of certain judges and courts, most notably the U.S. Supreme Court and Chief Justice John Roberts. It is one thing to respect the First Amendment rights of jurists and the canons of the Code of Judicial Conduct permitting speech to improve the judiciary, but it is quite another when these rights are exercised in a manner that casts doubt on the legitimacy of the judicial system itself, at least without constructive criticism. It is of legitimate concern when someone of Judge Posner’s status and visibility says: “I don’t think [the Supreme Court is] well managed and I don’t think the Justices are doing a good job.” Recently, at an event related to the unveiling of his biography, Posner was quoted as saying that he was writing a new book about the federal judiciary, that “I don’t think the judges are very good. I think the Supreme Court is awful. I think it’s reached a real nadir,” and that only Justices Ginsburg and Breyer were “qualified” to sit on the court and could write a decent opinion.
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