For months, rumors have circulated about Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit unloading on Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in a conversation before a small audience of First Amendment advocates.
A video of the conversation, which took place in May, has just been posted on YouTube, and the rumors were correct: The prominent and prolific Posner railed against several “stupid” decisions by Roberts, and called the chief justice a “terrible manager” of the federal judiciary. For good measure, Posner said that Scalia’s 2008 gun rights decision D.C. v. Heller was “a terrible opinion” and that his support for the right to burn the American flag was “very silly.”
