Richard Allen Posner, a University of Chicago Law School scholar and former federal appeals judge who helped make law and economics a major field, died Nov. 10 at 87, the school announced Nov. 11.
Posner joined the law school faculty in 1969. His 1973 book, Economic Analysis of Law, became a seminal work in a field that applies economic theory to legal rules and institutions; the school said the book is now in its ninth edition. The school also said Posner’s views on common-law efficiency were debated.
President Ronald Reagan appointed Posner to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 1981. Posner became the court’s chief judge in 1993 and held the post through 2000. He left the bench in 2017, ending a 36-year judicial career. The law school said he wrote about 3,300 opinions.
In a 2013 essay, Posner revisited his opinion upholding Indiana’s voter photo-identification law. He wrote that judges lacked data to weigh the law’s possible effects, including deterring voter impersonation and making it harder for eligible voters without photo ID to vote. “I may well have been wrong in Crawford,” he wrote.
University of Chicago Law School Dean Adam Chilton called Posner “prolific, influential, and endlessly curious.”
