Richard A. Posner

From the Publisher: The financial and economic crisis that began in 2008 is the most alarming of our lifetime because of the warp-speed at which it is occurring. How could it have happened, especially after all that we've learned from the Great Depression? Why wasn't it anticipated so that remedial steps could be taken to avoid or mitigate it? What can be done to reverse a slide into a full-blown depression? Why have the responses to date of the government and the economics profession been so lackluster? Richard Posner presents a concise and non-technical examination of this mother of all financial disasters and of the, as yet, stumbling efforts to cope with it. No previous acquaintance on the part of the reader with macroeconomics or the theory of finance is presupposed. This is a book for intelligent generalists that will interest specialists as well. Among the facts and causes Posner identifies are: excess savings flowing in from Asia and the reckless lowering of interest rates by the Federal Reserve Board; the relation between executive compensation, short-term profit goals, and risky lending; the housing bubble fueled by low interest rates, aggressive mortgage marketing, and loose regulations; the low savings rate of American people; and the highly leveraged balance sheets of large financial institutions. Posner analyzes the two basic remedial approaches to the crisis, which correspond to the two theories of the cause of the Great Depression: the monetarist-that the Federal Reserve Board allowed the money supply to shrink, thus failing to prevent a disastrous deflation-and the Keynesian-that the depression was the product of a credit binge in the 1920's, a stock-market crash, and the ensuing downward spiral in economic activity. Posner concludes that the pendulum swung too far and that our financial markets need to be more heavily regulated.

A concise, lively, and bracing exploration of an issue bedeviling our cultural landscape--plagiarism in literature, academia, music, art, and film--by one of our most influential and controversial legal scholars. Best-selling novelists J. K. Rowling and Dan Brown, popular historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose, Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree, first novelist Kaavya Viswanathan: all have rightly or wrongly been accused of plagiarism--theft of intellectual property--provoking widespread media punditry. But what exactly is plagiarism? How has the meaning of this notoriously ambiguous term changed over time as a consequence of historical and cultural transformations? Is the practice on the rise, or just more easily detectable by technological advances? How does the current market for expressive goods inform our own understanding of plagiarism? Is there really such a thing as "cryptomnesia," the unconscious, unintentional appropriation of another's work? What are the mysterious motives and curious excuses of plagiarists? What forms of punishment and absolution does this "sin" elicit? What is the good in certain types of plagiarism?Provocative, insightful, and extraordinary for its clarity and forthrightness, The Little Book of Plagiarism is an analytical tour de force in small, the work of "one of the top twenty legal thinkers in America" (Legal Affairs), a distinguished jurist renowned for his adventuresome intellect and daring iconoclasm.From the Hardcover edition.

"Domestic intelligence in the United States today is undermanned, uncoordinated, technologically challenged, and dominated by an agency-the FBI-that is structurally unsuited to play the central role in national security intelligence. Despite the importance of domestic intelligence to national security, it is the weakest link in the U.S. intelligence system. In Remaking Domestic Intelligence, Richard A. Posner explains the dangerous weaknesses undermining our domestic intelligence and offers a solution: the creation of a domestic intelligence agency that would be separate from the FBI and have no law enforcement authority or responsibility.". "He shows why the FBI, because its primary activity is law enforcement, is not the solution to the problem of domestic intelligence and how a new agency, lodged in the Department of Homeland Security, would, lacking a law enforcement function, avoid the deep tension between criminal investigation and national security intelligence that plagues the FBI-and might even allay concerns that domestic intelligence endangers civil liberties. Book jacket."--BOOK JACKET.

Argues for a conception of the liberal state based on pragmatic theories of government, and views the actions of elected officials as guided by interests rather than by reason and the decisions of judges by discretion rather than by rules. Further argues that democracy is best viewed as a competition for power by means of regular elections. Citizens should not be expected to play a significant role in making complex public policy regarding, say, taxes or missile defense. [book cover].

Judge Posner surveys the history and theory of American electoral law and practice, analyzes which Presidential candidate "really" won the popular vote in Florida, surveys the litigation that ensued, evaluates the courts, the lawyers, and the commentators, and ends with a blueprint for reforming our Presidential electoral practices.

Ambitious legal thinkers have become mesmerized by moral philosophy, believing that great figures in the philosophical tradition hold the keys to understanding and improving law and justice and even to resolving the most contentious issues of constitutional law. They are wrong, contends Richard Posner in this book. Posner characterizes the current preoccupation with moral and constitutional theory as the latest form of legal mystification - an evasion of the real need of American law, which is for a greater understanding of the social, economic, and political facts out of which great legal controversies arise. In pursuit of that understanding, Posner advocates a rebuilding of the law on the pragmatic basis of open-minded and systematic empirical inquiry and the rejection of cant and nostalgia - the true professionalism foreseen by Holmes a century ago.

"Thirty years ago a young assistant professor named Richard Posner asked the question of whether the existence of natural monopoly provides adequate justification for government intervention. His answer was no. The evils of natural monopoly are exaggerated, the effectiveness of regulation in controlling them is highly questionable, and regulation costs a great deal.". "Thirty years after its initial publication, read the original insights of Richard Posner about the regulation of natural monopoly as well as a new preface in which Posner reflects on the deregulation of industries that has occurred since 1969 and the possibilities for more deregulation in the future."--BOOK JACKET.

This work consists of a revised version of the first "Clarendon Law Lectures" delivered in October 1995. The book presents a comparative analysis of the English and American legal systems.