In "Reflections on Judging," Richard Posner distills the experience of his thirty-one years as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Surveying how the judiciary has changed since his 1981 appointment, he engages the issues at stake today, suggesting how lawyers should argue cases and judges decide them, how trials can be improved, and, most urgently, how to cope with the dizzying pace of technological advance that makes litigation ever more challenging to judges and lawyers. For Posner, legal formalism presents one of the main obstacles to tackling these problems. Formalist judges--most notably Justice Antonin Scalia--needlessly complicate the legal process by advocating "canons of constructions" (principles for interpreting statutes and the Constitution) that are confusing and self-contradictory. Posner calls instead for a renewed commitment to legal realism, whereby a good judge gathers facts, carefully considers context, and comes to a sensible conclusion that avoids inflicting collateral damage on other areas of the law. This, Posner believes, was the approach of the jurists he most admires and seeks to emulate: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo, Learned Hand, Robert Jackson, and Henry Friendly, and it is an approach that can best resolve our twenty-first-century legal disputes.

【作者简介】

理查德.波斯纳，先后以最优生和年级第一名毕业于耶鲁大学英文系（1959）和哈佛大学法学院（1962）。曾任美国联邦最高法院大法官助理、联邦政府律师、斯坦福大学法学院副教授（1968）、芝加哥大学法学院教授（1969）和讲座教授。1981年出任美国联邦第七巡回区上诉法院法官至今（1993～2000年任首席法官），同时担任芝加哥大学法学院高级讲师。

波斯纳是法律经济学的主要创建者之一，他将经济学分析的方法推广到所有的法律领域，为法律经济学的发展和繁荣做出了卓越的贡献；此外，他也是「法律与文学」和实用主义法学的领军人物。波斯纳著作众多，辐射广泛，有「一个人的智库」之誉；他的法律学术和司法实践重塑了美国的法学和法律。

【译者简介】

苏力，北京大学法学院教授，主要著述有《法治及其本土资源》、《制度是如何形成的》、《阅读秩序》、《送法下乡》等，以及译著《宪政与分权》、《宪政与民主》、《法理学问题》、《司法过程的性质》、《国家篇·法律篇》等。