On the style (and a little bit on the substance) of Judge Posner's same-sex marriage opinion

A few thoughts prompted by Paul Horwitz's observation about the style of Judge Posner's opinion in Baskin v. Bogan requiring Wisconsin and Indiana to provide and recognize same-sex marriages:

Paul is right that this opinion "speaks in a different register than the one that many other judges writing in this area in the past few months have strained at achieving." It is vintage Posner. I find this vintage too tart and informal; but the taste it leaves is unmistakable. To explain why he writes this way, here's Posner quoting William Popkin describing Posner's opinion style:

The public projection of judicial authority through an authoritative institutional and individual style of presenting judicial opinions has always existed in tension with the internal professional reality that the development of the law is a messy task, fraught with conflict and uncertainty. And this has placed tremendous pressure in the Anglo-American tradition on the judicial opinion, which must implement the dual external and internal goals of preserving judicial authority and developing judicial law. That pressure has only increased in the modern legal culture where judges acknowledge the intersection of law and politics, reject the older tradition of judges authoritatively declaring law derived from legal principle, and consider an institutional base for judging to be insufficient support for justifying judicial law in a legal system where democratic legislation is now the dominant source of law. The judge is no Hercules.

This leaves modern judges with the difficult task of appealing to an external source of substantive law, without the protective armor of authoritative legal principle or a completely secure institutional base. My suggestion for responding to this difficulty . . . is to make greater use of a personal/ exploratory style of presenting judicial opinions, as illustrated by Posner’s approach. This style implements what I call “democratic judging,” which is suited to a legal culture where law and politics are clearly related and in which a democratic process is essential to maintaining the authority of government institutions.

Reflections on Judging (pp. 259-260). 

In constitutional cases like this one, Posner seemingly takes Holmes as a guide substantively as well as stylistically. Holmes had the puke test. Posner's version of this seems to be something like disdain or incredulity. This explains the charged characterizations of various arguments put forward by the states, such as "totally implausible" and "so full of holes that it cannot be taken seriously." It also explains his reformulations of various state arguments, like this one: "Heterosexuals get drunk and pregnant, producing unwanted children; their reward is to be allowed to marry. Homosexual couples do not produce unwanted children; their reward is to be denied the right to marry. Go figure." 

An exploratory, "impure" judicial style need not be so harsh. A better alternative, in my view, is the kind of opinion style cultivated by Judge Sutton. Good examples of this style include his opinion upholding the individual mandate against facial invalidation and his opinion reversing a hate crime enhancement in the Amish beard-cutting case. Like Judge Posner's opinions, Judge Sutton's are conversational and accessible to an intelligent lay reader. But in contrast with Posner's Baskin opinion (or his stylistically and substantively similar partial-birth abortion opinion), one does not sense disdain for lawyers' arguments or contempt for legislators and voters.