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In March of 2011, Judge Posner made some waves for criticizing the Justices for hearing mock trials based on Shakespeare’s plays.

He says mock trials of fictitious characters don’t “contribute to anyone’s enlightenment.” For Judge Posner, the hobby symptomizes the broader ills of contemporary “celebrity culture.”

“That’s the problem with presidents and Supreme Court justices and billionaires. They think that because they are successful in one sphere they’re experts in everything,” Judge Posner says. Supreme Court justices should stop “preening” and return to “their dignified anonymity,” he says.

The ABA Journal reports that Judge Posner will preside over the trial of Socrates.

Star litigators in Chicago are preparing to retry a controversial 2,400-year-old free speech case that famously resulted in the death of Socrates, now considered the father of Greek philosophy, when he drank a cup of poisonous hemlock.

Dan Webb of Winston and Strawn and plaintiffs lawyer Robert A. Clifford, a former chair of the ABA Section of Litigation, will represent Socrates at the Jan. 31 proceeding, which is being held as a fundraiser by theNational Hellenic Museum in Chicago. The case for the City of Athens will be made by former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, now a partner at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, and Patrick M. Collins of Perkins Coie.

Judge Richard A. Posner of the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will head a three-judge panel that also includes his federal appeals court colleague William J. Bauer and Cook County Circuit Judge Anna Demacopoulos.

There you go.

 

Following the taxing conclusion of the 2012 Term, and a retreat to his “impregnable island fortress,” Chief Justice Roberts returns to anchor the Justices for a new year. All eyes turn to Justice Kennedy to augur his votes on same sex marriage, affirmative action, and voting rights. Yet, if NFIB taught us anything, don’t count the Chief’s broccoli till it fully grows in.

With that,  may I join the Chief in singing:

Should old acquaintances–with the taxing power–be forgot;

and never brought to mind–that means you Jan Crawford!

For auld lang syne.

If you have any questions for Taleb, please share them here, and I will try to ask them.

I was a huge fan of Black Swan, and am reading Antifragile now. I’ve written quite a bit about Taleb’s work here.