Randal C. Picker

Randal C. Picker, known as Randy, was born in 1959. His connection to the University of Chicago began nearly five decades before his death, when he enrolled in the College. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics in 1980, graduating cum laude and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and a master's degree in economics in 1982.

He went on to the University of Chicago Law School and graduated with a JD with honors in 1985. As a student he was an associate editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif.

After law school Picker clerked for Judge Richard A. Posner of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, whom he later called a mentor. He then practised at Sidley & Austin in Chicago, working on debt restructuring and corporate reorganizations in bankruptcy.

He returned to Hyde Park in 1989 to join the Law School faculty, hired by then Dean Geoffrey R. Stone. He served as associate dean from 1994 to 1996, later held the Paul and Theo Leffmann Professorship of Commercial Law until 2012, directed the Olin Program in Law and Economics from 1999 to 2001, and from 2013 was the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law.

His scholarship ranged across private law, law and economics, antitrust and the legal effects of technological change. With Douglas G. Baird and Robert H. Gertner he wrote Game Theory and the Law (1994). Baird credited him with incorporating game theory into the standard account of law and economics, first in secured transactions, then bankruptcy, and then contract and tort law. His paper with Michael McConnell on municipal bankruptcy was described by Baird as the canonical work in the field. He also co-authored casebooks on security interests and on antitrust law.

Picker shaped the law directly too. As a member of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws he played an important role in the 2001 revision of Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code, and while he was vice chair of the National Bankruptcy Conference, Congress adopted its recommended reforms of small-business bankruptcy. His last major project, The Quest for Next: A Competitive History of the Computer Industry, was under contract with Princeton University Press.

He taught antitrust, network industries, technology policy, copyright, secured transactions, bankruptcy and corporate reorganizations, as well as business law at the Chicago Booth School of Business. In 2015 he launched the Law School's first massive open online course, Internet Giants: The Law and Economics of Media Platforms, taking a filmmaking course to prepare for it.

He was one of the university's most active institutional citizens. He chaired the committee that produced the 2017 report on disruptive conduct and freedom of expression widely known as the Picker Report, served as spokesperson for the Council of the University Senate, chaired the Library Board, sat on the Laboratory Schools board and on the faculty advisory committee for the presidential search, and in summer 2026 became vice provost for academic affairs.

Picker was married to Gretchen, and they had three children, Adam, Ben and Emma.

He took improvisational theatre classes at The Second City in Chicago and later performed in and organised an improv group that gave public shows, once inviting his former dean Geoffrey Stone as a special guest. Colleagues remembered his office door being always open and his habit of arriving at any discussion with his own heavily tabbed copy of the court decision in question.

Randal Picker died unexpectedly on 15 August 2026, aged 66. The University of Chicago announced his death on 17 August. No cause of death was made public.

Tributes came from Dean Adam Chilton, Provost Katherine Baicker, President Paul Alivisatos and many colleagues, and the antitrust community marked his death in the legal press. A memorial service was held at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel on 18 September 2026, followed by a reception at the Law School.

Picker is remembered as a scholar who brought game theory into the mainstream of law and economics, a contributor to the modern Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code and to small-business bankruptcy reform, and an early adopter of online teaching. The Picker Report remains part of the University of Chicago's approach to free inquiry and expression.

Colleagues stressed his influence as a teacher and mentor. Professor M. Todd Henderson said he became an academic because of Picker, and Stanford's Douglas Melamed told Law.com that he was as intellectually honest as they come.