An interesting suggestion for Scalia's replacement

Professor Michael Broyde of the Emory Unviersity Law School has made a different recommendation for replacing Justice Antonin Scalia, given the difficult political struggle between the president and the Republican senators.

Rather than trying to find a moderate that could get confirmation, or making a recess appointment which would last only through December 2016, the president could . . .

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". . . appoint a leading legal mind [who is] at the end of his career. In particular, the President should nominate Judge Richard Posner to the Supreme Court. Posner is a leading intellectual light of the past half-century in law.  He is the author of more than 40 books -- many of them landmarks and classics in diverse fields. 

"He has been a judge on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals since 1981.   The Journal of Legal Studies found Posner to be the most-cited legal scholar of all time by a considerable margin. He is respected by judges, law professors and lawyers alike. He is the modern 'Albert Einstein' of American law, and it has always been an embarrassment to the legal system that he is not a member of the Supreme Court. Imagine the NBA Hall of Fame without Michael Jordan: Richard Posner is the Michael Jordan of Law.

"Three additional factors are important in supporting Posner's selection.  The judge is not a moderate but an iconoclast, with unique positions that neither political party fully supports:   He supports same-sex marriage, is a conservative on economic matters, opposes the war on drugs, minimizes privacy and is famous for undertaking economic analysis of many issues.

"Everybody agrees with him sometimes and almost no one all the time. Second, Posner is already 77 and is unlikely to serve for many decades given his age. The next President could conceivably name Posner's successor.

"Finally, and most importantly, the idea that one of the leading lights of law worldwide is a Supreme Court justice ought to make anyone who cares about the high court and the law proud to be an American."

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I don't presume to know a lot about Judge Posner, but just from ordinary newpaper reading I know that he often gets into battles with a range of legal minds, such that it's hard to peg him into any pigeon hole . . . except prodigious and perhaps brilliant.

Ralph