Posner and Judicial Writing

It seems that Judge Posner is having a good influence on judicial writing. The 7th Circuit Lott v. Levitt opinion (via Volokh Con.) written by Evans with Ripple and Sykes signing on, is clear, pleasant, and uses contractions, even in an opinion whose subject is the fine detail of choice of law and writing pleadings:

The principle of waiver is designed to prohibit this very type of gamesmanship—Lott is not entitled to get a free peek at how his dispute will shake out under Illinois law and, when things don’t go his way, ask for a mulligan under the laws of a different jurisdiction. In law (actually in love and most everything else in life), timing is often everything. The time for Lott to ask for the application of Virginia law had passed—the train had left the station.