Quotessence
Home / Authors / Richard Posner Biography
Richard Posner

Richard Posner Biography

Jurist

Related Quotes

“I was an advocate of the deregulation movement and I made - along with a lot of other smart people - a fundamental mistake, which is that deregulation works fine in industries which do not pervade the economy. The financial industry undergirded the entire economy and if it is made riskier by deregulation and collapses in widespread bankruptcies as what happened in 2008, the entire economy freezes because it runs on credit.”

PeopleIfsMadeSaidRunningMistakeEconomyHappenedMovementFineIndustrySmartFundamentalsFinancialAppearanceCreditCollapseFreezeViewpointsBankruptcySmart PeopleDeregulation
Author:Richard Posner
Create image

“The Constitution has to be interpreted loosely, otherwise it becomes a straitjacket. You can't interpret it literally. You can pretend to, and go digging around in 18th Century dictionaries to figure out what 'cruel and unusual punishment' meant or what the 'right to bear arms' meant, but that is all fake really. The Constitution has to be interpreted in light of modern needs, and that's what they (the strict interpreters) end up doing in spite of all their investigations.”

NeedsEndsLightModernCenturyFiguresArmsBearsConstitutionPunishmentFakeSpiteUnusualInvestigationStrictDictionaryDiggingRight To Bear ArmsInterpreter18th CenturyCruel And Unusual Punishment
Author:Richard Posner
Create image

“The confidentiality of the judicial process would not matter greatly to an understanding and evaluation of the legal system if the consequences of judicial behavior could be readily determined. If you can determine the ripeness of a cantaloupe by squeezing or smelling it, you don't have to worry about the produce clerk's mental processes.”

IfsMatterProcessUnderstandingWorryProduceBehaviorConsequenceDetermineDeterminedJudicialEvaluationClerksLegal SystemSqueezingRipenessConfidentiality
Author:Richard Posner
Create image

“But Friedman seemed to share Friedrich Hayek's extreme and inaccurate view that socialism of the sort that Britain embraced under the old Labour Party was incompatible with democracy, and I don't think that there is a good theoretical or empirical basis for that view. The Road to Serfdom flunks the test of accuracy of prediction!”

ThinkingViewsPartyDemocracyShareTestsBasesExtremesLibertarianSocialismBritainLabourPredictionsTheoreticalAccuracyLabour PartyHayekRoad To SerfdomFriedrich Hayek
Author:Richard Posner
Create image

“It is the censor's business to make a judgment about the propriety of the content or message of the proposed expressive activity. The regulation here does not authorize any judgment about the content of any speeches. ... A park is a limited space, and to allow unregulated access to all comers could easily reduce rather than enlarge the park's utility as a forum for speech. Just imagine two rallies held at the same time in the same park area using public-address systems that drowned out each other's speakers.”

DoeTwoGovernmentSpaceImagineActivitySpeechJudgmentMessagesAreasAccessParksAddressesSpeakersRegulationUtilityExpressiveProprietyForums
Author:Richard Posner
Create image

“Violent video games played in public places are a tiny fraction of the media violence to which modern American children are exposed. Tiny - and judging from the record of this case, not very violent compared to what is available to children on television and in movie theaters today.”

ChildrenGovernmentTodayGamesCasesRecordsViolenceModernMediaTelevisionJudgingTheaterAvailableTinyViolentVideoExposedFractionsMovie TheaterMedia ViolenceViolent Video Games
Author:Richard Posner
Create image