> Because of this, their opinions tend to be quite readable and and many times quite entertaining (regardless of your political persuasion, the late Antonin Scalia wrote some memorable opinions).
However they're too often terrible law, because they do mental backflips to support their desired political outcome.
Compare all of the "United States v. Windsor" opinions (both Kennedy's majority decision and the dissents from Scalia, Roberts and Alito) with Posner's decision in Baskin v Bogan + Wolf v Walker a year later.
The former are bad law. Windsor isn't in front of the court because Edith Windsor's injury hasn't been cured in the lower courts, or because the US government is seriously trying to undo that cure. It's politics. She got her money, that was all settled in a lower court much earlier. The US Supreme Court granted certiorari and then a majority cobbled together this vague, murky document solely for a political end. They even pretend not to really notice that the US government's side of the argument is conspicuously not being represented by said government.
But the dissents don't stop at pointing at this ridiculous charade, or even foreshadowing (Scalia talks about "waiting for the other shoe" to drop and sure enough the Obergefell was before that same court only a couple of years later) they offer equally ridiculous rationales for the opposing point of view. Scalia in particular seems ready to bend over backwards to imagine Congress has legitimate purpose in doing things its members explicitly tell the public are for an illegitimate purpose.
In contrast Posner's decision is wonderfully clear. For example, at one point he imagines a hypothetical tax on women (but not men), of just $2, and he says a government ought to show a "compelling reason" for such a tax or else it is discriminatory and must be struck even though $2 is hardly a grave injury - because the discrimination is the problem, not the weight of the tax, and it is the discrimination which must be assessed against any benefit of that discrimination. He explains his intent to examine the cases before him (which both basically go like this: "Gay marriage is illegal in our state because of children") on that basis, and of course on that basis they come up very short indeed.
Like Windsor the cases are on appeal, but the success of state attorneys here would actually have had a material impact, since the decisions they were appealing actually strike state laws that try to exclude gay marriage. Whether you could actually get married in those states depended (to some extent) on Posner's decision.
However they're too often terrible law, because they do mental backflips to support their desired political outcome.
Compare all of the "United States v. Windsor" opinions (both Kennedy's majority decision and the dissents from Scalia, Roberts and Alito) with Posner's decision in Baskin v Bogan + Wolf v Walker a year later.
The former are bad law. Windsor isn't in front of the court because Edith Windsor's injury hasn't been cured in the lower courts, or because the US government is seriously trying to undo that cure. It's politics. She got her money, that was all settled in a lower court much earlier. The US Supreme Court granted certiorari and then a majority cobbled together this vague, murky document solely for a political end. They even pretend not to really notice that the US government's side of the argument is conspicuously not being represented by said government.
But the dissents don't stop at pointing at this ridiculous charade, or even foreshadowing (Scalia talks about "waiting for the other shoe" to drop and sure enough the Obergefell was before that same court only a couple of years later) they offer equally ridiculous rationales for the opposing point of view. Scalia in particular seems ready to bend over backwards to imagine Congress has legitimate purpose in doing things its members explicitly tell the public are for an illegitimate purpose.
In contrast Posner's decision is wonderfully clear. For example, at one point he imagines a hypothetical tax on women (but not men), of just $2, and he says a government ought to show a "compelling reason" for such a tax or else it is discriminatory and must be struck even though $2 is hardly a grave injury - because the discrimination is the problem, not the weight of the tax, and it is the discrimination which must be assessed against any benefit of that discrimination. He explains his intent to examine the cases before him (which both basically go like this: "Gay marriage is illegal in our state because of children") on that basis, and of course on that basis they come up very short indeed.
Like Windsor the cases are on appeal, but the success of state attorneys here would actually have had a material impact, since the decisions they were appealing actually strike state laws that try to exclude gay marriage. Whether you could actually get married in those states depended (to some extent) on Posner's decision.