This
review of a new book by Judge Richard Posner suggests that we need to conduct a balancing test before tossing aside the Constitution in the name of defending the nation against the terrorist threat:
Quote:
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That is why Judge Richard Posner is such a welcome voice in the national conversation about balancing freedom against security. Posner, the brilliant and prolific federal appeals court judge, is renowned—and not always in a good way—for putting a price tag on everything. But whatever quibbles liberals may have with his law-and-economics approach to anything from rape to unwanted babies, they should celebrate the intellectual rigor he brings to the problem of civil liberties in wartime. In his new book, Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency, Judge Posner approaches the wartime civil-liberties problem in precisely the manner the Bush administration will not: with a meticulous, usually dispassionate, weighing of what is gained against what is lost each time the government engages in data-mining, indefinite detentions, or the suppression of free speech.
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Now, as you all know, I am no fan of Posner, and I don't agree with many of the conclusions he reaches in this book. Nevertheless, he does at least engage in the exercise of balancing costs against benefits.
