Friday, January 05, 2007

Stephen Breyer Says "Ouch!" Again

Having been kicked around very nicely by Judge McConnell, Justice Breyer now gets politely trashed one more, this time by Judge Richard A. Posner. Here's a sample:

"The bricolage [that Justice Breyer has assembled] is as ingenious as it is complex, but the curious consequence of such ecclecticism is that it puts the judge in approximately the position he would occupy if had no constitutional theory. For couldn't Justice Breyer pull a stick out of his bundle to justify any decision that he wanted to reach? It's not as if the sticks have different weights; each is available to tip the balance in a particular case."

Judge Posner's review, "Justice Breyer Thows Down the Gauntlet," 115 Yale Law Journal 1699 (May 2006), may be accessed
here.

Update and Mea Culpa: I should have credited Maimon Schwarzschild's post at The Right Coast for leading me to Judge Posner's article, which Professor Schwarzschild calls "politely devastating." In addition, I see that Professor Mike Rappaport has also posted an entry at The Right Coast in which he administers a few more kicks.

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