How Judges Think

Posner is unique in the world of American jurisprudence, a highly regarded U.S. appellate judge and a prolific and controversial writer on legal philosophy. Opinionated, sarcastic and argumentative as ever, Posner is happy to weigh in not only on how judges think, but how he thinks they should think. When sticking to explaining the nine intellectual approaches to judging that he identifies, and to the gap between legal academics and judges, and his well-formulated pragmatic approach to judging, Posner is insightful, accessible, often funny and a model of clarity. * Publishers Weekly * Posner's latest book, How Judges Think, is important, if only because it's Posner looking at his own profession from the inside. Two of the chapters, "Judges Are Not Law Professors" and "Is Pragmatic Adjudication Inescapable?," are worth the price of admission by themselves. The book can be read as one long screed against the jurisprudence of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and stands as a refutation to those who believe the category of conservative can lazily be applied to a mind as independent as Posner's. -- Barry Gewen * New York Times online * A prolific and brilliant writer, Posner's How Judges Think is perhaps his most illuminating work for its profound, and sometimes polemical, insights into the judicial process...Judge Posner's examination of the issues is thorough, scholarly and riveting. He has written an important book--a must read not just for lawyers, but also for anyone who wants to understand how the inscrutable, and sometimes oracular, process of judging really works. -- James D. Zirin * Forbes.com *

Richard A. Posner retired as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 2017. He was previously a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.

* Introduction Part One: The Basic Model * Nine Theories of Judicial Behavior * The Judge as Labor-Market Participant * The Judge as Occasional Legislator * The Mind of the Legislating Judge Part Two: The Model Elaborated * The Judicial Environment: External Constraints on Judging * Altering the Environment: Tenure and Salary Issues * Judicial Method: Internal Constraints on Judging * Judges Are Not Law Professors * Is Pragmatic Adjudication Inescapable? Part Three: Justices * The Supreme Court Is a Political Court * Comprehensive Constitutional Theories * Judicial Cosmopolitanism * Conclusion * Acknowledgments * Index