Richard Posner

Richard Allen Posner was born in New York City on 11 January 1939, to Blanche (Hofrichter) and Max Posner. His father's family were Romanian Jews and his mother's family were Ashkenazi Jews from Galicia.

He studied English literature at Yale University, graduating in 1959 with a BA summa cum laude and membership of Phi Beta Kappa. At Harvard Law School he was president of the Harvard Law Review and graduated first in his class in 1962 with an LLB magna cum laude.

After law school Posner clerked for Justice William J. Brennan Jr. of the US Supreme Court from 1962 to 1963. He then advised Commissioner Philip Elman at the Federal Trade Commission and worked in the Office of the Solicitor General under Thurgood Marshall.

He joined the Stanford Law School faculty in 1968 and moved to the University of Chicago Law School in 1969. There, influenced by Chicago economists such as Aaron Director and George Stigler, he became a leader of the law and economics movement. He was a founding editor of The Journal of Legal Studies in 1972 and in 1973 published Economic Analysis of Law, the field's seminal text. From 1978 to 1981 he was the Lee and Brena Freeman Professor of Law.

President Ronald Reagan nominated him to the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on 27 October 1981, and he received his commission on 1 December 1981. He was chief judge from 1993 to 2000 while continuing as a senior lecturer at Chicago. Over 36 years he wrote about 3,300 opinions and was known as a tough questioner, a champion of legal pragmatism and an enemy of jargon. His later rulings included opinions against Indiana and Wisconsin bans on same-sex marriage and, in 2015, against Wisconsin restrictions on abortion clinics.

Posner wrote nearly 40 books, including The Economics of Justice, The Problems of Jurisprudence, Sex and Reason, Law, Pragmatism and Democracy and A Failure of Capitalism, and wrote widely on current events, from the Clinton impeachment to the 2000 election. From 2004 to 2014 he co-wrote the Becker-Posner Blog with Gary Becker. He retired from the bench on 2 September 2017.

Posner was married to Charlene Horn, and they had two children. They lived for many years in Hyde Park, Chicago. Their son Eric Posner became a prominent legal scholar at the University of Chicago Law School.

A self-described cat person, he was devoted to his Maine Coons, Dinah and later Pixie, and often illustrated legal points in his opinions with cat-related examples. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in early 2018, about six months after leaving the bench, and by 2022 was living in a nursing facility.

Posner died on 10 November 2026, aged 87. The University of Chicago Law School announced his death on 11 November. A cause of death was not stated in the announcement; he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2018.

Dean Adam Chilton said there had never been a legal scholar as prolific, influential and endlessly curious, calling him a giant whose influence on the legal system, on law and economics and on the Law School could not be overstated. The school said it would publish a longer tribute with remembrances from colleagues.

Posner was identified in The Journal of Legal Studies as the most cited legal scholar of the twentieth century, and is regarded as the most cited American legal scholar of all time. Economic Analysis of Law shaped generations of lawyers, and The New York Times called him one of the most important antitrust scholars of the past half century.

He received the Henry J. Friendly Medal in 2005. The Harvard Law Review dedicated an issue to him in 2007, and the University of Chicago Law Review marked his 25 years on the bench in 2008. His former clerk Tim Wu called him probably America's greatest living jurist.