"The Rise and Fall of Judicial Self-Restraint" with Judge Richard Posner

Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit will deliver a lecture on the history of the theory of judicial self-restraint as articulated primarily by Thayer, Holmes, Brandeis, Frankfurter, and Bickel (the "Thayerians"). He will discuss and evaluate the various grounds on which the theory (or tradition) has been defended, describe its virtual abandonment by the academy and rejection by both wings of the U.S. Supreme Court, and examine the reasons for its rise and fall.

Commentators: Lee Epstein, the Henry Wade Rogers Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law, and Aziz Huq, Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Chicago School of Law School

The Brennan Center Jorde Symposium, an annual event, was created in 1996 to sponsor top scholarly discourse and writing from a variety of perspectives on issues that were central to the legacy of William J. Brennan, Jr. The fall lecture is typically held at the University of California at Berkeley, Boalt Hall, where Tom Jorde taught for many years. The spring lecture is at a different law school every year. Both lectures and the four commentaries are published annually in the California Law Review. For more information, visit http://www.brennancenter.org/content/pages/2010-11_brennan_center_jorde_... .

This event was recorded April 14, 2011.