Stone v. Posner on constitutional rights and the War on Terror.

Simon has the detailed play-by-play of the debate between Professor Geoff Stone and Judge Richard Posner that took place at the 7th Circuit conference last week. You know, the one I depicted in scribbled words and pictures. I saw his sheaf of notes and thought it rather strange at the time, but with a plan -- achieved! -- to produce the definitive description of the event, it made perfect sense. Little did Stone and Posner know that Simon was claiming dominion over things. If there are distortions in there, who will know?

Stone “consider[s] himself a ‘civil libertarian,’” and “usually argue[s] that restrictions of civil liberties should be a last resort, considered only after we are satisfied that the government that the government has taken all other reasonable steps to keep us safe.” Posner, on the other hand, “do[es] not think that ‘restrictions of liberties should be a ‘last resort.’ [He] prefer[s] to see all proposed counterterrorist measures arrayed[] and compared one with the other without a thumb on the scale”; he “describes [him]self as a ‘pragmatist’ … [and] usually argues that restrictions of civil liberties are warranted whenever the benefit to be derived from those restrictions in terms of increased security ‘outweigh’ the cost to society of limiting the rights.”

(Footnotes omitted.)