Paul Horwitz on Judge Posner, the academy and the judiciary

Paul Horwitz has an exemplary review of Richard Posner's "Divergent Paths: The Academy and the Judiciary," at the New Rambler. It's short and not easily summarized, but it's a well-written, interesting and even fun read. Here's a taste:

Posner already seems certain not only of the flaws in the judiciary and legal academy but of their remedies, and this affects his recommendations in bizarre ways. Duncan Kennedy famously wrote that legal education is a machine for the reproduction of hierarchy. Divergent Paths wants to turn law schools into a device for the large-scale industrial cloning of Richard Posner himself…. Even a world filled with first-rate Posners would be an unsteady place; one filled with inevitably less capable people, taught nothing but how to emulate him, would be calamitous. Whatever legal academics' job is, it can't be that.

As they say, read the whole thing.