From: "Damien Lawson" <damienlawson-AT-vtown.com.au>
Subject: AUT: Re: Increasing Police Repression
Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 18:56:41 +1100


This is a multi-part message in MIME format.


Chris,

can you tell me some more about Posner and the background to this post? When di he become a judge? Who appointed him? What is the context to this ruling? Where do I find the ruling?

Damien
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Chris Wright
  To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
  Sent: Friday, February 09, 2001 11:31 AM
  Subject: AUT: Increasing Police Repression


  The recent 7th Circuit ruling, which gave the go ahead to Chicago police to
   openly resume political spying (and disruption of constitutionally
   protected activities) was written by Judge Richard Posner (a "Senior
   Lecturer in Law"  at U of C).
  
   According to Posner, government should be given greater power to attack
   dissidents, but government must not be used to limit the power of
   corporations and billionaires.  It's important for activists to understand
   these  connections (and contradictions) if we are to understand the power
   of the state in defending corporate power and the power of the corporations
   in defining the role of the state.
  
   Posner has written a number of books (including "Antitrust Law: An Economic
   Perspective", "Economic Analysis of Law"-now in its fifth edition-and "The
   Economics of Justice") and many articles exploring the application of free
   market economics to law. For example, concerning the Microsoft antitrust
   case Posner wrote that "the public interest would be served by avoiding
   further litigation, with its potential for unsettling a key industry in the
   global economy". (http://www.microsoft.com/malaysia/press/linkpage1775.htm)
  
   He has proposed and sought to test the theory that the common law is best
   explained as if the judges were trying to promote "economic efficiency". He
   has urged "wealth maximization" as a goal of legal and social policy. 
  
   Up until the late 1970s, U.S. antitrust law was characterized by the
   pursuit of two (sometimes conflicting?) goals: protecting consumers from
   monopolies and price fixing, and protecting small businesses from larger
   competitors. Posner's book and a similar volume by Judge Robert Bork ("The
   Antitrust Paradox") laid the theoretical groundwork for a seminal shift in
   antitrust thinking--one focusing primarily on "consumer welfare". In
   "Antitrust Economics", Posner lays out why some types of economic behavior
   that up until then had been considered anticompetitive (e.g. mergers
   between competitors, exclusive supplier arrangements) can actually be good,
   i.e. "pro-consumer". For example, while retail behemoths such as WalMart or
   mergers like that between Daimler-Benz and Chrysler may be devastating to
   smaller competitors, Posner argues benefit consumers by generating
   economies of scale and lower prices. In "Economics of Justice" Posner
   promoted "ethical wealth maximization" as an alternative to Kantian ethics
   and utilitarian thought.
  
   Posner also engaged in private consulting and was from 1977 to 1981 the
   first president of Lexecon Inc., a firm made up of lawyers and economists
   that provides economic and legal research and support to corporations in
   antitrust, securities, and other litigation.  Lexecon Inc. has assisted
   Lincoln Savings and Loan in perpretrating fraud on investors and regulators
   (see http://law-phoenix.uchicago.edu//features/1006milberg.html), and
   worked for junk-bond financier Michael Milken.
  
   see also:
   http://www.law.uchicago.edu/faculty/posner-r/
  
   http://www.src.uchicago.edu/users/gsb1/Rational/posnerbio.html
  
    >>

  Chris Wright

  Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.  -- Frederick Douglass

HTML VERSION:

----- Original Message -----

From: Chris Wright

To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu

Sent: Friday, February 09, 2001 11:31 AM

Subject: AUT: Increasing Police Repression

The recent 7th Circuit ruling, which gave the go ahead to Chicago police to
 openly resume political spying (and disruption of constitutionally
 protected activities) was written by Judge Richard Posner (a "Senior
 Lecturer in Law"  at U of C).
 
 According to Posner, government should be given greater power to attack
 dissidents, but government must not be used to limit the power of
 corporations and billionaires.  It's important for activists to understand
 these  connections (and contradictions) if we are to understand the power
 of the state in defending corporate power and the power of the corporations
 in defining the role of the state.
 
 Posner has written a number of books (including "Antitrust Law: An Economic
 Perspective", "Economic Analysis of Law"-now in its fifth edition-and "The
 Economics of Justice") and many articles exploring the application of free
 market economics to law. For example, concerning the Microsoft antitrust
 case Posner wrote that "the public interest would be served by avoiding
 further litigation, with its potential for unsettling a key industry in the
 global economy". (http://www.microsoft.com/malaysia/press/linkpage1775.htm)
 
 He has proposed and sought to test the theory that the common law is best
 explained as if the judges were trying to promote "economic efficiency". He
 has urged "wealth maximization" as a goal of legal and social policy.
 
 Up until the late 1970s, U.S. antitrust law was characterized by the
 pursuit of two (sometimes conflicting?) goals: protecting consumers from
 monopolies and price fixing, and protecting small businesses from larger
 competitors. Posner's book and a similar volume by Judge Robert Bork ("The
 Antitrust Paradox") laid the theoretical groundwork for a seminal shift in
 antitrust thinking--one focusing primarily on "consumer welfare". In
 "Antitrust Economics", Posner lays out why some types of economic behavior
 that up until then had been considered anticompetitive (e.g. mergers
 between competitors, exclusive supplier arrangements) can actually be good,
 i.e. "pro-consumer". For example, while retail behemoths such as WalMart or
 mergers like that between Daimler-Benz and Chrysler may be devastating to
 smaller competitors, Posner argues benefit consumers by generating
 economies of scale and lower prices. In "Economics of Justice" Posner
 promoted "ethical wealth maximization" as an alternative to Kantian ethics
 and utilitarian thought.
 
 Posner also engaged in private consulting and was from 1977 to 1981 the
 first president of Lexecon Inc., a firm made up of lawyers and economists
 that provides economic and legal research and support to corporations in
 antitrust, securities, and other litigation.  Lexecon Inc. has assisted
 Lincoln Savings and Loan in perpretrating fraud on investors and regulators
 (see http://law-phoenix.uchicago.edu//features/1006milberg.html), and
 worked for junk-bond financier Michael Milken.
 
 see also:
 http://www.law.uchicago.edu/faculty/posner-r/
 
 http://www.src.uchicago.edu/users/gsb1/Rational/posnerbio.html
 
  >>

Chris Wright

 

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.  -- Frederick Douglass