As for “Lochner v. New York was rightly decided” buttons, one of my political philosophy profs (he also taught "The Philosophy of Public Administration", and that class was a hoot) was the last grad assistant for Leo Strauss at U of Chicago. He practically made a career of writing that Lochner was wrongly decided. :-) He would have laughed heartily at the button.
On to railroads. When a railroad was proposed to be built through Champaign County, Illinois, and its county seat, Urbana, the locals were outraged, so the railroad skirted Urbana a bit to the west and went through a newly created town, Champaign. (Currently Champaign-Urbana is the host, of course, of the U of Illinois.)
The effects of those decisions remain today. Urbana (also the home of the first "downtown shopping mall" -- Lincoln Square (now demolished) where several whole city blocks were demolished to provide the location) is "urbane" and "professional" and run by "experts. The cops might as well all wear business suits.
Champaign, OTOH, is still, comparatively "the Wild West". unplanned (until recently) sprawl growth. Lots of prostitution (especially when Rantoul AFB had hundreds of airmen cycling though the base), etc. (There was, of course, prostitution in Urbana, but instead of streetwalkers they had more discreet callgirls.)
Urbana is for Academics, Champaign is for entreperneurs and disruptors and chaos-makers. It is no surprise that Mozilla and Wolfram both started in cheap downtown buildings in "old town" Champaign. They would never have been allowed to do what they did in Urbana.
As "sunk cost" activities, I find it amazing how long the effects of railroads can remain.
Judge Posner was unerring (as he usually is) in his analysis and admission that judges work backwards from the decision they want to arrive at, to a rationalization from principles.
Which is fine! This is not geometry where you have axioms and lemmas and theorems.
It is desirable that law be predictable. Whether what you describe is fine depends on whether what decision the judge who will be assigned to the case will want is more predictable than what decisions the law implies.
As usual, your analysis goes a step farther than I expected. Most interesting point.
I would add, though, that even if the judge is more predictable than the written statute, at least the statute exists in advance, so you have at least some way to make a good-faith decision. You never know who you’ll get as judge.
And I somehow feel that predictability is not the *only* desideratum for a law.
Fields certainly sounds like an interesting guy.
As for “Lochner v. New York was rightly decided” buttons, one of my political philosophy profs (he also taught "The Philosophy of Public Administration", and that class was a hoot) was the last grad assistant for Leo Strauss at U of Chicago. He practically made a career of writing that Lochner was wrongly decided. :-) He would have laughed heartily at the button.
On to railroads. When a railroad was proposed to be built through Champaign County, Illinois, and its county seat, Urbana, the locals were outraged, so the railroad skirted Urbana a bit to the west and went through a newly created town, Champaign. (Currently Champaign-Urbana is the host, of course, of the U of Illinois.)
The effects of those decisions remain today. Urbana (also the home of the first "downtown shopping mall" -- Lincoln Square (now demolished) where several whole city blocks were demolished to provide the location) is "urbane" and "professional" and run by "experts. The cops might as well all wear business suits.
Champaign, OTOH, is still, comparatively "the Wild West". unplanned (until recently) sprawl growth. Lots of prostitution (especially when Rantoul AFB had hundreds of airmen cycling though the base), etc. (There was, of course, prostitution in Urbana, but instead of streetwalkers they had more discreet callgirls.)
Urbana is for Academics, Champaign is for entreperneurs and disruptors and chaos-makers. It is no surprise that Mozilla and Wolfram both started in cheap downtown buildings in "old town" Champaign. They would never have been allowed to do what they did in Urbana.
As "sunk cost" activities, I find it amazing how long the effects of railroads can remain.
Great, very interesting piece.
So a great justice with a sound philosophy who was heinously wrong in his analysis of a case involving a woman because of his sexism.
Given this clear misstep, he should, of course, be canceled. And all of his positions and logic deemed illegitimate…
Judge Posner was unerring (as he usually is) in his analysis and admission that judges work backwards from the decision they want to arrive at, to a rationalization from principles.
Which is fine! This is not geometry where you have axioms and lemmas and theorems.
It is desirable that law be predictable. Whether what you describe is fine depends on whether what decision the judge who will be assigned to the case will want is more predictable than what decisions the law implies.
As usual, your analysis goes a step farther than I expected. Most interesting point.
I would add, though, that even if the judge is more predictable than the written statute, at least the statute exists in advance, so you have at least some way to make a good-faith decision. You never know who you’ll get as judge.
And I somehow feel that predictability is not the *only* desideratum for a law.