Legal Positions
In Posner's youth and in the 1960s as law clerk to William J. Brennan he was generally counted as a liberal. However, in reaction to some of the perceived excesses of the late 1960s, Posner developed a strongly conservative bent. He encountered Chicago School economists Aaron Director and George Stigler while a professor at Stanford. Posner summarized his views on law and economics in his 1973 book The Economic Analysis of Law.
Today, although generally viewed as to the right in academia, Posner's pragmatism, his qualified moral relativism and moral skepticism, and his affection for the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche set him apart from most American conservatives. As a judge, Posner's rulings have always placed him on the moderate-to-liberal wing of the Republican Party, where he has become more isolated over time. In July 2012 Posner stated that "I've become less conservative since the Republican Party started becoming goofy." Among Posner's judicial influences are the American jurists Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Learned Hand.
Read more about this topic: Richard Posner
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