How Judges Think (Pims - Polity Immigration and Society Series)

however,this provides most important understanding/perspective to anyone facing court.To the author, PLEASE read Sol Stein's books, especially"Stein on Writing"and revise this to make it into a much-greater weapon against abuse, usable by many-more advocates throughout our World!and for the rest of us:in my opinion, legalism is part of the /religion/ of the state( whose "gods" include:authority-over-othersinstitution/establishment/incorporated-herd/gangmechanism/legalismsocial-position$possessionmaterialismhabit )that legalism holds Spirit-of-Justice in contempt nowevery-bit as much as it didwhen Pontius Pilate convicted Jehoshua/Jesus without evidence,i have seen to be true.Spirit-of-Justice equally holds mechanistic legalism in contempt!The problem is that while our Constitutions pretend we have the right to our own Religions,when the State's Religion includes legalism,which holds Spirit-of-Justice in contempt,then our right to Justice is eradicated by legalism's aggression & prejudice!Notice that ALL the components of State religion that i identified above, hold /Spirit/ in contempt...right there is the important consequence of mistakenly assuming that seperation of Church from State means eradication of /Spirit's/ validity/rights from our State...Spirit is exactly the difference between a corpse and one of us RealLivingLives!!Yet the established interpretation is that Spirit is needing running-over/destructioneradication, for Legalism's glorification...Thank you for having written this book,it may help our world's responsible-Citizenry leverage LivingWorth's rights, someday...but for the sake of our great-grandchildren's lives, please revise it with as much accessible clarity as possible so that it becomes one of the Great Weapons against institutional despotism currently highjacking our legal-regimes...( ps: for examples of institutional-despotism, i have been told by a criminal-lawyer that many of the decisions rendered in India are quite illuminating of the fundamental-assumption-errors in our legal-regime )Namaste!

Não dei 5, pela qualidade do papel. Nossos livros têm mais qualidade nesse quesito. Mas a entrega foi rápida e o livro uma bela surpresa.

muito interessante, extremamente útil em minha monografia. Aborda uma teoria descritiva e um modelo de tomada de decisão jurídica... Análise econômica do direito

Posner is pretty much the Go-To Guy in legal studies today. You may disagree with his conclusions but he won’t bore you (he’s a forceful writer), you won’t find it hard to follow him (he writes clearly), and you won’t wonder whether he has a hidden agenda (he is open and forthright in stating his sources, as well as any reservations he has about his own conclusions drawn from them). He’s academic (well documented and well reasoned) but not overly academic: his observations are always rooted in experience, for he is both an eminent teacher of jurisprudence at the University of Chicago and an acting federal circuit court judge, with years of practice on the bench. His books are not easy reads –he explores complicated issues and doesn’t simplify them—but you’ll never get lost in them, because he is an exceptionally articulate explainer. Years ago, when I was a history professor at a small women’s college in the east, I taught a course on historical method, and it was writers (thinkers) (scholars) like Posner I wanted to introduce to my students, not that he writes like historians do but that he writes forcefully, sparingly, lucidly and compellingly, and persuasion is just as important a part of any scholar’s business as explication.This is the third book by Posner that I have read. All three books were good. Two –including this one—are superb, models of engaged scholarship. (If you haven’t read anything by him before, I recommend you start with Reflections on Judging, 2013.) Posner is It.Arguing against legalism and various forms of moralism, Posner argues for a restrained pragmatic approach to the law, in line with his models on the bench, especially Holmes (“The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience”), who accepted that the written law only went so far and that beyond that point, the prudent judge crossed from enforcing pre-existing, stringent rules to making new law. Law in action is imprecise but not amorphous. “In our system the law as it is enforced in courts is created by judges, using legal propositions as raw materials.” He does not argue that a judge can make any law he wants. Rather, he argues that in any but the most constrained case, the judge must choose among courses of action that are not automatically (because the law tells the judge exactly what to do) clean --or should I say clear? From this simple premise –that judges are de facto legislators—Posner moves to a critique of many, maybe most academic commentators on the law, and a scathing critique of what is taught in even the best law schools in our country. He has, is in other books, harsh words to say about Justice Scalia’s supposed originalism, which he finds inadequate and self-deceiving –even Scalia admitted that he moved beyond it at times.If I were a lawyer, I would read this book NOW.

In this erudite and highly readable book, a distinguished judge and scholar provides the reader with remarkable insights into how judges think, or ought to think, when interpreting and creating the law. Judge Posner rejects sterile legalist theories in favor of a pragmatic approach to judicial decision-making, heavily influenced by economic theory. Drawing on insights from psychology, American legal history, and economics, Judge Posner argues persuasively that judges are not rule-bound adjudicating machines mechanically applying the law; rather judges creatively engage the real world by balancing competing interests, weighing consequences, and applying cost/benefit analyses when interpreting the law. In the process, judges, at least in the unique American judicial system, inevitably act as legislators and, yes, as human beings, they are influenced by life experiences, political beliefs, and psychological make-up. The result is a highly sophisticated and nuanced discussion of how judges think, or at least how they should think. This book is written in a lively style, with humor, wit, and a great deal of wisdom, including some very practical advice regarding how attorneys should frame their arguments when they appear in court. (Hint: instead of focusing on words; focus on the real world consequences of your arguments).