Richard Posner, Judge and Law and Economics Scholar, Dies at 87

Richard Allen Posner, a longtime University of Chicago Law School scholar, former federal appellate judge, and pioneer in the field of law and economics, died on November 10. He was 87.

Career and Scholarship

Posner joined the Law School faculty in 1969 and spent 36 years as a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He was named the University of Chicago’s Lee and Brena Freeman Professor of Law in 1978, a title he held until 1981, when he was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He was the chief judge of the court from 1993 to 2000 and retired from the bench in 2017 having written some 3,300 opinions on a wide range of issues.

He authored thousands of court opinions, hundreds of academic articles, and dozens of books, and was a leading scholar of law and economics, a field born and developed at the University of Chicago beginning in the early 20th century. In 1973, he authored the field’s seminal book The Economic Analysis of Law, which is now in its ninth edition.

The New York Times reported that Judge Posner served from 1981 to 2017 on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, and wrote thousands of judicial opinions and more than 50 books on a vast array of topics, along with countless scholarly articles, essays, book reviews and blog posts. His son Eric confirmed the death.

Influence and Legacy

The Law School described Posner as widely considered to be the most influential legal scholar of all time and, during his time on the bench, as among the most powerful jurists outside the Supreme Court. The New York Times reported that Judge Posner was the most-cited legal scholar in the second half of the 20th century, according to a 2000 study conducted by Fred R. Shapiro, beating the runner-up, Ronald Dworkin, by a factor of almost two.

The journalist Gary Rosen wrote in The Wall Street Journal in 2002 that Posner was “a one-man think tank.” In casebooks that collect excerpts from judicial opinions and are the basis for much of legal education, Judge Posner’s work was featured for many years more often than that of any other judge. “The differential in terms of total influence on the casebooks between Posner and almost all the other judges is staggering,” the authors of a second study, Mitu Gulati and Veronica Sanchez, wrote in 2002.

When Professor Gulati and Stephen J. Choi updated the study this year, they found that little had changed. Judge Posner’s lead remained “astonishing,” they wrote.

Tributes

“There has never been a legal scholar quite as prolific, influential, and endlessly curious as Dick Posner—he was a giant whose influence on our legal system, the field of law and economics, and on our law school cannot be overstated,” said Law School Dean Adam Chilton, the Howard G. Krane Professor of Law. “As a law and economics scholar and torts professor, I doubt there has been a week that’s gone by since I started teaching at the Law School where I haven’t talked about one of Dick’s ideas or opinions. We will mourn his loss deeply, and on behalf of the entire Law School community, I extend our deepest condolences to his family.”

The Law School said it will post a longer tribute to Judge Posner’s extraordinary life and career in the coming days, including remembrances from his colleagues.

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Sources

• ft.com: Subscribe to read
• law.uchicago.edu: Law School Mourns the Passing of Richard A. Posner, Senior Lecturer, Law and Economics Pioneer, and Former Federal Appellate Judge | University of Chicago Law School
• nytimes.com: Judge Richard A. Posner Has Died. His Influence in Law Was Beyond Compare. - The New York Times

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