</s>CHICAGO (AP) — U.S. Appeals Court Judge Richard Posner, whose acerbic wit and legal opinions made him a legend in legal circles, has announced his retirement.

Posner is stepping down after more than three decades on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.

The 78-year-old Posner, who was appointed to the court by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, will leave the bench Saturday.

Posner said in a statement Friday that he has written more than 3,300 opinions during his career and is “proud to have promoted a pragmatic approach to judging.”

Posner has been an outspoken critic of the current state of the U.S. Supreme Court, calling it “highly politicized.”

Posner is also on the faculty of University of Chicago Law School. He said he looks forward to continuing to teach and publish.</s>CHICAGO (AP) - U.S. Appeals Court Judge Richard Posner, whose acerbic wit and legal opinions made him a legend in legal circles, announced Friday that he is retiring.

Posner, 78, is stepping down after more than three decades on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.

Posner was appointed to the court by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, and will leave the bench Saturday. He said in a statement that he has written more than 3,300 opinions during his career and is "proud to have promoted a pragmatic approach to judging." He added that "judicial opinions should be easy to understand and that judges should focus on the right and wrong in every case."

Born in New York, Posner earned a bachelor's degree in English from Yale University in 1959. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1962. Posner clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. and was an assistant to U.S. Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall before Marshall became a Supreme Court justice.

Posner has been an outspoken critic of the current state of the nation's high court, calling it "highly politicized."

"I think it's reached a real nadir," Posner said in a talk at a Chicago book store last year. "Probably only a couple of the justices, (Stephen) Breyer and (Ruth Bader) Ginsburg, are qualified. They're OK, they're not great."

He was equally free with his opinions issued from the bench. In one, annoyed with a lawyer who'd ducked one of his questions, Posner included a picture of a man with his head buried in the ground.

Seventh Circuit Chief Judge Diane Wood said in a statement Friday that Posner is one of the world's leading public intellectuals.

"His opinions have had an impact around the world," Wood said. "He has produced an unparalleled body of scholarship - books, articles and public commentary - covering virtually every legal topic that can be imagined."

Posner is also on the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School. He said he looks forward to continuing to teach and publish.</s>One of the nation's most influential judges and legal writers, Richard Posner, is retiring as of Saturday from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.

Posner has written more than 3,300 opinions in nearly 36 years on the bench, along with scores of books. He is known for a sharp wit, clear writing and opinions that could be equally biting and humorous, with occasional references to his cats.

Posner said in a statement he is "proud to have promoted a pragmatic approach to judging... and to apply my view that judicial opinions should be easy to understand and that judges should focus on the right and wrong in every case."

The 7th Circuit's Chief Judge, Dianne Wood, calls Posner "one of the most distinguished people to ever sit on the federal bench," adding "His opinions have had an impact around the world."

Posner was appointed by President Ronald Reagan and was known as a conservative, although in recent years he became less so. He told NPR's Nina Totenberg, "I've become less conservative since the Republican Party started becoming goofy."

Posner is an outspoken critic of the U.S. Supreme Court and some of it's justices, once saying in an interview, "It's not a real court, it's a political court." The 78-year old says in his statement that he plans to continuing teaching at the University of Chicago Law School, as he has since 1969, and writing "with a particular focus on social justice reform."</s>Judge Posner Stepping Down After 36 Years At 7th Circ.

Law360, New York (September 1, 2017, 5:02 PM EDT) -- U.S. Circuit Judge Richard A. Posner, one of the most prolific and influential legal thinkers of the past half-century, is retiring from the Seventh Circuit over the weekend, the court announced Friday.



Judge Richard Posner, who has served on the bench for more than three decades, will retire from the Seventh Circuit on Saturday. Posner, 78, has served on the bench for three and a half decades, and said in a press release issued by Seventh Circuit that he will step down officially on Saturday. He...

To view the full article, register now.</s>Richard Posner, a judge on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals based in Chicago, who was a prolific writer of court opinions and books, is set to retire, according to a published report.

Posner, 78, told the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin in a statement that he would retire on Saturday: “I look forward to continuing to teach and publish, with a particular focus on social justice reform.”

Posner is a legal giant, who had a huge impact on the American judicial system, and recently wrote in an article that there should be mandatory retirement for federal judges, at “probably 80.”

More details to come.</s>Program note: For more on the Ronald Reagan presidency and how it changed the game for the leaders who followed, watch For more on the Ronald Reagan presidency and how it changed the game for the leaders who followed, watch CNN Films' "The Reagan Show" on Monday, September 4, at 8 p.m. ET. This story was first published in 2016.

If you've ever wondered why there are so many landmarks named after Ronald Reagan, look no further than a bearded, bespectacled man from Washington known for hating tax increases and taking an annual pilgrimage to Burning Man.

Less than a decade after his presidency ended, Reagan aides made a concerted effort to convince local governments and private associations to name places after their boss across the nation. Led by lobbyist and anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, the Reagan Legacy Project was founded in the 1997 with the goal of naming something substantial after the nation's fortieth president in every state and, eventually, make the Gipper's mark in each of the nation's 3,144 counties.

"The big goal is to generate 100,000 conversations where parents talk to their kids, neighbors talk to each other as they fly into Reagan airport, and the kid says, "Who is Reagan?" Norquist, who has become famous in recent years for the anti-tax hike pledge he encourages Republicans to sign, told CNN in an interview. "You do need to remind people. Americans, understandably, spend very little time looking backwards."

Norquist's first major coup was to convince Congress to change the name of Washington's National Airport to "Reagan National Airport," a victory that riled Democrats. Since then, he has worked to convince state legislatures to recognize Reagan's February birthday, and he encourages them to name parks, post offices, roads and other places after his old boss.

From something as small as a terrace at the Los Angeles Country Club, to a New Hampshire mountain, nothing is too small or large for Norquist to make a push.

Why stop there? Would Reagan's face fit on Mt. Rushmore? Norquist said he's already looked into it. "I'm told that it would," Norquist said. "My preference is to replace Teddy Roosevelt because he was a statist and a progressive Republican as opposed to a Reagan Republican. Does he deserve the kind of status that a Jefferson and a Washington have? The answer is yes, he does."</s>Countdown to the Illinois Bicentennial Video #94: Something to Learn About Illinois History – Chicago – by Vibyana Sacluti</s>Portraying the man who was the most powerful union buster in the world as a friend of the working class is dangerous and a likely indicator of Trump's future policies.

This post originally appeared at In These Times.

On Thursday, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta announced that former President Ronald Reagan will be entering the Labor Department’s Hall of Honor, joining the ranks of luminaries ranging from Mother Jones to Eugene Debs.

In his announcement, Acosta cited Reagan’s tenure as the president of the Screen Actors Guild, along with a series of personal anecdotes, to explain that the Gipper was a friend of the working class. However, one does not have to be a history scholar to understand that Reagan was in fact an enemy of organized labor throughout his presidency.

During the course of his presidency, Ronald Reagan became the most powerful union buster in the world. He stacked the National Labor Relations Board with officials who vehemently opposed unions, causing long-term damage to collective bargaining and workers’ rights in the United States.

To start, we can look to his firing of over 11,000 air traffic controllers in 1981. “More than any other labor dispute of the past three decades, Reagan’s confrontation with the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, or PATCO, undermined the bargaining power of American workers and their labor unions,” Joseph A. McCartin, a professor of history at Georgetown University, wrote for The New York Times in 2011.

Reagan was enraged after thousands of air traffic controllers walked off the job — the result of the Federal Aviation Administration refusing to meet the bargaining demands of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization. The union wanted a wage increase for controllers and a slightly shorter workweek. Reagan responded by firing the controllers when they refused to return to work.

Richard Wolff, a professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, claims that unions never really recovered from the blow Reagan delivered in 1981. “The labor movement until that time had come to believe that it was strong enough that, even if it had a rough battle, it could work a compromise and salvage certain basic safeties, such as not replacing people during the strike,” Wolff tells In These Times. “All of these conventions and assumptions were smashed.”

That was just the beginning. During the course of his presidency, Ronald Reagan became the most powerful union buster in the world. He stacked the National Labor Relations Board with officials who vehemently opposed unions, causing long-term damage to collective bargaining and workers’ rights in the United States.

After the air traffic controller debacle, corporations became emboldened and targeted unions with a new zeal, illegally firing workers for organizing with the knowledge that they could largely evade punishment under Reagan’s labor board.

Since the middle of the 1970s, union membership has dropped from 26.7 percent of the workforce to just 13.1 percent, and Reagan played a significant role in that decline.

Reagan’s attacks on unions, along with his pro-corporate economic policies, also had a major impact on the income of working-class Americans. Wages for the bottom 70 percent of American wage earners have been stagnant since around the time Reagan took office, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Among other factors, this lack of growth can be attributed to the steady reduction in union membership, as well as anti-worker trade policies implemented under Reagan and successive administrations.

Reagan’s economic agenda was focused on pursuing policies that increased the wealth of the rich, including reducing the top income tax rate from 70 percent to 28 percent, while increasing the tax burden on the working and middle classes.

“By weakening the labor movement, Reagan certainly contributed to its inability to do better than keep stagnant wages,” Wolff says. “Whereas before Reagan, real wages had risen steadily across a 30-year period.”

To portray Ronald Reagan as a friend of the working class is not only fallacious — it is dangerous. If the Trump administration does indeed see the Reagan years as a model for its own policies, as seems to be the case, it’s likely that income inequality will continue to rise while US workers continue to struggle for a decent standard of living and dignity on the job.</s>The mounting intensity of Donald Trump’s war on the press confounds news veterans like me who remember Trump’s history as a media whore. During my 20 years as editor-in-chief of Variety, I knew Trump as an avid self-publicist who frantically sought loftier standing on Hollywood’s power pyramid.

But here’s the rub: My perspective on Trump is shaped by my earlier relationship with another icon who also yearned to leverage showbiz fame into political power. Assigned to cover Ronald Reagan’s first gubernatorial campaign for The New York Times, I had an inside seat to observe how a vastly different style of showbiz-politician dealt with the media.

On one level the similarities are striking: Both were once Democrats whose ideologies remained ambiguous. Both were drawn to “branding” rather than to conventional business – Trump with clubs and hotels, Reagan as the symbol of General Electric. Both were committed to media manipulation: Trump let Marla Maples know when he was divorcing her by leaking it to the New York Post. Reagan let reporters know loud and clear that his soon-to-be ex-wife, Jane Wyman, was dumping him mainly because he was a liberal and she was staunchly on the right (Reagan formally shed his liberal leanings in 1962).

But here’s where the similarities end: While Trump instinctively responds to attack with narcissistic rage, Reagan normally took refuge in his “good guy” persona. Thus, in his latest tirades, Trump seems to be encouraging his “base” to inflict physical harm on reporters, if given the opening. But the Reagan I covered liked schmoozing with the press and, in his early political days, was not above admitting to total confusion on certain issues. As president of the Screen Actors Guild, he was puzzled and appalled by the ubiquity of the blacklist. He knew he had to recite his obligatory “I-hate-all-Communists” lines for the public record and even gave up some names of supposed Communist sympathizers to a Congressional committee, but complained to me, “Do these politicians really expect me to create a little FBI to tell them who’s a Commie and who isn’t?”

I do not intend here to paint over Reagan’s frailties. He once observed, “Politics is like show business in that you need a helluva opening and you can never get away with coasting.” I understood Reagan took a liking to me because I was with the Times and he wanted good press. He had also learned I had voted for Barry Goldwater, as had he, and hence had passed the “trustworthy test” (like Trump, Reagan believed all reporters had to be liberals to get a job). But when I wrote some snarky pieces about his strategic dependence on Stuart Spencer, his political gun for hire, he reacted with a good-natured wince. Spencer formulated his key positions because he understood the political rules and Reagan early on sensed he was tactically clueless. It was Spencer who told him he had to say things like “let’s send the welfare bums back to work,” and Reagan complied. In discussing his shifting ideology, Reagan liked to say, “I didn’t leave the Democratic party, it left me.” In reality, as Reagan’s acting career faded and General Electric put him under contract as its spokesman, Reagan realized that GE’s conservative lexicon could be his meal ticket. The man who had once supported liberal candidates and fought anti-Communist zealots like Richard Nixon was suddenly America’s champion of the free market economy.

Reagan’s record as governor was a mixed bag. He violated right-wing dicta by raising taxes and signing a lenient abortion bill. But he panicked when agitators took over Berkeley, calling out the National Guard and creating a firestorm of controversy.

Reagan was never a great actor, but he projected his smiling “good guy” image with superb consistency. Even when he made the most egregious mistakes, we all had a tendency to forgive him and to assume his good intentions. That’s not the case with Trump. During his fifth season of The Apprentice, Trump acknowledged: “Nobody takes things more personally than me. When somebody says something personal about me I hate them for the rest of my life.”

Under no conditions would Reagan have engaged in the sort of cultural warfare that has consumed Trump America. If he were around today, Reagan would feel that Trump is practicing bad politics. Even worse, it is lousy showbiz.
United States federal judge Richard Posner has announced his retirement after three decades of service on the bench of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, Justice Posner has written more than 3,300 opinions from the bench.