Friday, January 11, 2008

You're Not Famous 'til You Have a Project

It's just past the wire on Friday night. I was hoping to post every day this week - I seem to have missed the mark by several minutes. Well, you can't say that I didn't try.... Anyway, onward!

This past Wednesday the Supreme Court heard oral argument in a voting rights case, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, which Dahlia Lithwick promptly wrote about over at Slate. (Courtesy of SCOTUSblog, you can find the case history here, the transcript here, and the blog's comments here. How great is that?) At issue in the case is whether requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls is constitutional. It's an important case with considerable political overtones and potential ramifications, and Lithwick doesn't seem to think that it went so well for the voters, though the Court has yet to issue its opinion. As interesting as that all is, though, that's not really the point of this post.

In linking to the appellate decision in the Crawford case, which it calls "the most readable piece of legal writing in history" (big words!), the Slate article directed me to a website called Project Posner, which is dedicated to the opinions of formidable 7th circuit Judge Richard A. Posner. Now, I'm a pretty big geek, but I was really happy to learn that someone had had the sense to collect all these great opinions in one place where they're fairly easily browseable and searchable. Now if only there were similar pages about Judges Easterbrook and Kozinski, I'd be in geek heaven. (There is a pretty neat page about Judge Kozinski, but it only lists a few of his more famous opinions.)

Oh, and also: Judge Posner is himself a blogger! You can read his stuff over at the Becker-Posner Blog, which he co-authors with Nobel prize-winning economist Gary Becker.

1 comment:

Emerson said...

I was more than amused when Prof. Turley told us the story of Posner's imminent nomination to the Supreme Court back in the 80s. Apparently, just as President Reagan was going to submit his name to the Senate, Posner issued a ruling in a small-stakes adoption dispute. After giving his ruling, he then proceeded to opine on the market for adoption and concluded that more desirable babies will be more expensive and will get into the hands of those parents who want them more.

SCOTUS nomination = dead.

But now I have another link to check up on him at - I feel towards him what I feel towards Scalia - you don't like what they say all the time, but you have to respect their genius.