Is Judge Posner of the U.S. 7th Circuit a racist?

Question

I noticed that Posner went out of his way to note that the attacker in the Marisconish case was black, even though race was irrelevant to the case. Is he a bigot, in your opinion?

Good point, Steven F. BTW, I'm not a racist. For background on what I'm talking about, please see this link:
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:RzLPRFbCa7UJ:www.aals.org/profdev/newideas/kaufman.html+marisconish+wassell&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=us

Honeybeejim...I don't know what you're talking about. Copping out from what?

Answer 1

Please cite the actual comment. What you call going out of his way may sound like a casual reference to me. For all I know from your question, YOU could be the racist.

Edit: After reading your link, I do not accept that the judge went out of his way to mention the race of the attacker. In my opinion describing the attacker as “a respectably dressed black man" is no more racist than if he was described a "a respectably dressed tall man". The author of the article appears more racist to me.

Answer 2

judge posner has written thousands upon thousands of opinions. he's known for being the founder of a new form of jurisprudence in the 20th century.

law and economics is the method posner employs. he does a cost/benefit analysis of the plaintiffs and the defendants. when the plaintiffs maximize wealth, he decides in their favor. in cases where the defendant maximizes wealth, he rules in favor of the defendant.

in evaluating these claims, there is no room for a judge's own opinion. that's exactly the reason he developed it.

in this specific case, the person's race is not relevant. as much as "linguistic analysts" like to point out his word choice, that is not material to his decision making.

the decision remains the same. whether he is racist or not, a person applying a law and economics analysis will have the same outcome.

Answer 3

It is so easy to bandy around words like racist. Civility, as well as accuracy, requires that we be more careful than that. Taking one microscopic segment of a man's career and looking only at that is not a good way to determine anything. Look for patterns, not anomalies.

Answer 4

Funny how in this questions it's being referred to as 'racism'. But during the O.J. trial they made a point of turning it into a trial of color, not facts. I guess it just depends on who you are and how much money you have.

Answer 5

When some one claims racism, it changes the subject. [ i figure it a cope out]