What is Obviously Wrong with the Federal Judiciary, Yet Eminently Curable - Part I

By Libby Yin Goodknight, Krieg DeVault LLP

Judge Richard A. Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently authored an interesting (and highly entertaining) article entitled What is Obviously Wrong with the Federal Judiciary, Yet Eminently Curable - Part I. In the article, Judge Posner offers his take on three phases of the federal judicial process: trials, intermediate appeals, and decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court.

He notes that his commentary would be equally applicable to state judiciaries since they too have a tripartite structure.  Judge Posner’s observations on appeals are particularly amusing, as he recommends “the first thing to do is burn all copies of the Bluebook, in its latest edition 560 pages of rubbish[.]” 9 Green Bag 2d 187,193-94 (Winter 2016.) He also has quite a bit to say about modern appellate opinions, and laments that “eloquence is no longer a property of legal writing” in today’s society. Judge Posner’s article was published in The Green Bag Journal of Law, a quarterly humorous law journal supported in part by the George Mason University School of Law.

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