Judge Richard Posner, 7th Circuit, U.S. Court of Appeals
“It was tradition to not allow blacks and whites to marry — a tradition that got swept away.”
Two states attorneys general argued before a panel of judges on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago yesterday that marriage between members of the same gender should be stopped because of tradition. AP’s story explains what happened.
While judges often play devil’s advocate during oral arguments, the panel’s often-blistering questions for the defenders of the same-sex marriage bans could be a signal the laws may be in trouble — at least at this step in the legal process.
Richard Posner, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, hit the backers of the ban the hardest. He balked when Wisconsin Assistant Attorney General Timothy Samuelson repeatedly pointed to “tradition” as the underlying justification for barring gay marriage.
“It was tradition to not allow blacks and whites to marry — a tradition that got swept away,” the 75-year-old judge said. Prohibition of same-sex marriage, Posner said, derives from “a tradition of hate … and savage discrimination” of homosexuals.
Posner is one of those guys who gives us hope for the human race, and hope especially for that branch of the human race known as Homo americanus ssp. ordinarius.
Appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan, Posner is widely recognized as one of the brightest and most engaging judges in the U.S. today. That’s a sop to all the rest, to call him “one of ” the brightest — to avoid making everybody else give up hope.
But he’s outspoken enough that most legal scholars agree he’d never survive a hearing to take a place on the U.S. Supreme Court. The late Sen. Roman Hruska’s revenge, that we can’t get the best and the brightest on our highest court.
Posner is not content to sit on the bench and make high pronouncements. He pushes America, courts and lawyers, to be better. He teaches at the University of Chicago Law School (in a position not unlike that the young Barack Obama had). Posner’s high-flying comment-on-anything-important style got cut back in the past few months when his blogging partner died — Nobel-winning economist Gary S. Becker.
It must be agony to be a lawyer defending a pointless, silly and destructive law, to a panel that includes Richard Posner.
Arun With a View captured the reasons Posner strikes fear in conservatives, despite his being a Ronald Reagan conservative.
Sketch of Judge Richard Posner by the late David Levine
NPR has a delicious interview with Richard Posner. Money quote
“I’ve become less conservative since the Republican Party started becoming goofy,” [Posner] said.
And this
“Because if you put [yourself] in [John Roberts’] position … what’s he supposed to think? That he finds his allies to be a bunch of crackpots? Does that help the conservative movement? I mean, what would you do if you were Roberts? All the sudden you find out that the people you thought were your friends have turned against you, they despise you, they mistreat you, they leak to the press. What do you do? Do you become more conservative? Or do you say, ‘What am I doing with this crowd of lunatics?’ Right? Maybe you have to re-examine your position.”
Listen to it here and enjoy.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Texas Freedom Network’s emails — probably on the blog sometime soon.
Yes, I read Posner despite his errors, getting hoaxed by the DDT/Rachel Carson hoaxsters. That just indicates the danger of the hoax and the need to correct it and stamp it out.
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Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Reblogged this on Utopia – you are standing in it!.
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