Richard Allen Posner
Judge on United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
Incumbent
Assumed office  1981
Nominated by	Ronald Reagan
Preceded by	Philip Willis Tone
Succeeded by	Incumbent
Chief Judge on Seventh Circuit
In office 1993 – 2000
Nominated by	(Automatic succession)
Preceded by	William Joseph Bauer
Succeeded by	Joel Martin Flaum
Born	January 11, 1939 (1939-01-11) (age 68) New York, NY
Spouse	Charlene

Richard Allen Posner (born January 11, 1939, in New York City) is currently a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He is one of the most influential living legal theorists and a major voice in the law and economics movement, which he helped start while a professor at the University of Chicago Law School. He currently serves as a lecturer at the Law School. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the courts in the following districts: Central District of Illinois Northern District of Illinois Southern District of Illinois Northern District of Indiana Southern District of Indiana Eastern District of Wisconsin Western District... For the ecclesiastical office, see Incumbent (ecclesiastical). ... Year 1981 (MCMLXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link displays the 1981 Gregorian calendar). ... Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989) and the 33rd Governor of California (1967–1975). ... The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the courts in the following districts: Central District of Illinois Northern District of Illinois Southern District of Illinois Northern District of Indiana Southern District of Indiana Eastern District of Wisconsin Western District... Year 1993 (MCMXCIII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1993 Gregorian calendar). ... Year 2000 (MM) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full 2000 Gregorian calendar). ... is the 11th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1939 (MCMXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... New York, New York redirects here. ... is the 11th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1939 (MCMXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... New York, New York and NYC redirect here. ... The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the courts in the following districts: Central District of Illinois Northern District of Illinois Southern District of Illinois Northern District of Indiana Southern District of Indiana Eastern District of Wisconsin Western District... Law and economics, or economic analysis of law is an approach to legal theory that applies methods of economics to law. ... The University of Chicago Law School, having recently celebrated its centennial in the 2002-2003 school year, has established itself as a high profile part of the University of Chicago. ...

Posner is the author of nearly 40 books on jurisprudence, legal philosophy, and several other topics, including The Problems of Jurisprudence; Sex and Reason; Overcoming Law; Law, Pragmatism and Democracy; and The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory.

Biography

Posner graduated from Yale College (A.B., 1959, summa cum laude), majoring in English, and from Harvard Law School (LL.B, 1962, magna cum laude), where he was first in his class and president of the Harvard Law Review. After clerking for Justice William J. Brennan of the United States Supreme Court during the 1962-63 term, he worked for the Antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice. In 1969, he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School, where he remains a senior lecturer and where his son Eric Posner is Professor. He was a founding editor of the Journal of Legal Studies in 1972. President Ronald Reagan appointed Posner to the Seventh Circuit in 1981. He served as Chief Judge of that court from 1993 to 2000. For other uses, see Yale (disambiguation). ... Latin honors are Latin phrases used to indicate the level of academic distinction with which an academic degree was earned. ... English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language (including literatures from the U.K., U.S., Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, the Philippines, India, South Africa, and the Middle East, among other areas), English linguistics (including English phonetics, phonology... Harvard Law School (colloquially, Harvard Law or HLS) is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. ... Latin honors are Latin phrases used to indicate the level of academic distinction with which an academic degree was earned. ... The Harvard Law Review is a journal of legal scholarship published by an independent student group at Harvard Law School. ... In the United States, Canada and Brazil, a law clerk is a person who provides assistance to a judge in researching issues before the court and in writing opinions. ... William Joseph Brennan, Jr. ... The Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C. The Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C., (large image) The Supreme Court of the United States, located in Washington, D.C., is the highest court (see supreme court) in the United States; that is, it has ultimate judicial authority within the United States... The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) is a Cabinet department in the United States government designed to enforce the law and defend the interests of the United States according to the law and to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans. ... The University of Chicago Law School, having recently celebrated its centennial in the 2002-2003 school year, has established itself as a high profile part of the University of Chicago. ... Eric A. Posner Eric A. Posner (b. ... Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989) and the 33rd Governor of California (1967–1975). ... The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the courts in the following districts: Central District of Illinois Northern District of Illinois Southern District of Illinois Northern District of Indiana Southern District of Indiana Eastern District of Wisconsin Western District... Chief Judge is a title that can refer to the highest-ranking judge of a court that has more than one judge. ...

Posner is an unusual combination of a pragmatist in philosophy, a classical liberal in politics, and an economist in legal methodology. A 2004 poll by Legal Affairs magazine named Posner as one of the top twenty legal thinkers in the U.S.^[1] A prolific author of articles and books on a wide range of topics including the 2000 presidential election recount controversy, President Bill Clinton's scandalous affair with Monica Lewinsky and his resulting impeachment procedure, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. His analysis of the Lewinsky scandal cut across most party and ideological divisions. Posner's greatest influence is through his writings on law and economics — The New York Times called him "one of the most important antitrust scholars of the past half-century." In December 2004, Posner started a joint blog with Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker. Pragmatism is a school of philosophy which originated in the United States in the late 1800s. ... For other uses, see Philosophy (disambiguation). ... Liberalism is a political current embracing several historical and present-day ideologies that claim defense of individual liberty as the purpose of government. ... The Politics series Politics Portal This box:      Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions. ... Alan Greenspan, former chairman, United States Federal Reserve. ... Presidential electoral votes by state. ... William Jefferson Bill Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III[1] on August 19, 1946) was the 42nd President of the United States, serving from 1993 to 2001. ... Monica Samille Lewinsky (born July 23, 1973) is an American woman with whom the former United States President Bill Clinton admitted (after initially and vehemently denying) to having an inappropriate relationship[1] while Lewinsky worked at the White House in 1995 and 1996. ... The subject of this article is the 2003 invasion of Iraq. ... The New York Times is a daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed internationally. ... This article is about anti-competitive business behavior. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... The Nobel Prizes (Swedish: ) are awarded for Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Peace, and Physiology or Medicine. ... Gary Stanley Becker (born December 2, 1930) is an economist and a Nobel laureate. ...

Posner was mentioned in 2005 as a potential nominee to replace Sandra Day O'Connor because of his prominence as a scholar and an appellate judge. Robert S. Boynton has written in The Washington Post that Posner will never sit on the Supreme Court because, despite his "obvious brilliance," he has taken a number of positions seen as "outrageous" such as his: John Roberts is sworn in as Chief Justice by Associate Justice John Paul Stevens in the East Room of the White House on the same day as his confirmation, September 29, 2005. ... Sandra Day OConnor (born March 26, 1930) is an American jurist who served as the first female Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006. ...

• Contention in a 1999 Raritan article that the rule of law is an accidental and dispensable element of legal ideology;
• Argument that buying and selling babies on the free market would lead to better outcomes than the present situation, government-regulated adoption;
• Support for the legalization of marijuana and LSD.^[2]

In 2007 his review of Israeli Supreme Court Chief Justice Aharon Barak's book, The Judge in a Democracy caused quite a stir in Israel, renewing debate about judicial activism. Raritan Quarterly Review is a well-regarded literary journal that publishes poetry, fiction and essays. ... The rule of law is the principle that governmental authority is legitimately exercised only in accordance with written, publicly disclosed laws adopted and enforced in accordance with established procedure. ... A free market is an idealized market, where all economic decisions and actions by individuals regarding transfer of money, goods, and services are voluntary, and are therefore devoid of coercion and theft (some definitions of coercion are inclusive of theft). Colloquially and loosely, a free market economy is an economy... For other uses, see Adoption (disambiguation). ... Cannabis (also known as marijuana[1] or ganja[2] in its herbal form and hashish in its resinous form[3]) is a psychoactive product of the plant Cannabis sativa L. subsp. ... Lysergic acid diethylamide, commonly called LSD, LSD-25, or acid. ... Enlightened Despot is a book review of former Israeli Supreme Courts chief Justice Aharon Baraks book A Judge in a Democracy, written by US Jurist Richard Posner. ... Aharon Barak (Hebrew: אהרן ברק) (born September 16, 1936) is a professor of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and President of the Supreme Court of Israel since 1995. ... Judicial activism is a term used by political commentators to describe a tendency by judges to consider outcomes, attitudinal preferences, and other public policy issues in interpreting applicable existing law. ...

Legal positions

Judge Posner making a dinner speech at Federal Trade Commission

Posner's political and moral views are hard to summarize. His parents were affiliated with the American Communist party, and in his youth and in the 1960s as law clerk to William J. Brennan he was generally counted as a liberal. However, in reaction to some of the perceived excesses of the late 1960s, Posner developed a strongly conservative bent. Today, although generally considered a man of the right, Posner's pragmatism, his qualified moral relativism and moral skepticism,^[3] and his affection for the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche set him apart from most American conservatives. Among his other influences are the American jurists Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Learned Hand. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... | logo_caption = | seal = US-FederalTradeCommission-Seal. ... The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) is a Marxist-Leninist political party in the United States. ... “Right wing” redirects here. ... Pragmatism is a philosophic school that originated in the late nineteenth century with Charles Sanders Peirce, who first stated the pragmatic maxim. ... In philosophy, moral relativism is the position that moral or ethical propositions do not reflect objective and/or universal moral truths, but instead make claims relative to social, cultural, historical or personal circumstances. ... In meta-ethics, moral skepticism is a theory which maintains either that ethical claims are generally false, or else that we cannot sufficiently justify any ethical claims, and must therefore maintain doubt about whether they are true or false. ... Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) (IPA: ) was a nineteenth-century German philosopher. ... Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. ... Billings Learned Hand (January 27, 1872 – August 18, 1961) — usually called simply Learned Hand — was a famed American judge and an avid supporter of free speech, though he is most remembered for applying economic reasoning to American tort law. ...

Privacy

He famously opposed the right of privacy in 1981, arguing that the kinds of interests protected under privacy are not distinctive. He contended that privacy is protected in ways that are economically inefficient.

Abortion

He has written several opinions sympathetic to abortion rights, including a decision holding "partial-birth abortion" constitutionally protected in some circumstances. Partial-birth abortion (PBA) is a non-medical term used to refer to some late-term abortion procedures. ...

Breach of contract

He has written favorably of efficient breach of contracts. Breach often leads to a worse result for society: if a seller breaches a contract to deliver building materials, the buyer's workers might go idle while the buyer looks for a replacement. The lost production is a cost to the company and its workers and, as such, is a social cost. An efficient breach would be a situation in which the benefits are higher than the costs, because the seller is better off for breaching even after paying damages to the buyer (for instance, if some third party had a much greater need for the building materials, and was willing to pay a higher price for them). Efficient breach refers to a breach of contract that the breaching party considers desirable even when the legal and economic ramifications of such a breach are considered. ... Breach of contract is a legal concept in which a binding agreement or bargained-for exchange is not honored by one or more of the parties to the contract by non-performance or interference with the other partys performance. ... Cover is a term used in the law of contracts to describe a remedy available to a merchant buyer who has received an anticipatory repudiation of a contract for the receipt of goods. ... In law, damages refers to the money paid or awarded to a claimant (as it is known in the UK) or plaintiff (in the US) following their successful claim in a civil action. ...

War on Drugs

He has characterized the U.S.'s War on Drugs as "quixotic." In a 2003 CNBC interview, he discussed the difficulty of enforcing criminal marijuana laws and asserted that it is hard to justify the criminalization of marijuana compared to other substances. Massive mark-ups for drugs, areas/drugs/index. ... Cannabis (also known as marijuana[1] or ganja[2] in its herbal form and hashish in its resinous form[3]) is a psychoactive product of the plant Cannabis sativa L. subsp. ...

Animal rights

Posner engaged in a debate on the ethics of using animals in research with the philosopher Peter Singer in 2001 at Slate magazine. He argues that animal rights conflicts with the moral relevance of humanity, and that empathy for pain and suffering of animals does not supersede advancing society.^[4] He further argues that he trusts his moral intuition until it is shown to be wrong, and that his moral intuition says "it is wrong to give as much weight to a dog's pain as to an infant's pain." He leaves open the possibility that facts on animal and human cognition can and may change his intuition in the future; he further states that people whose opinions were changed by consideration of the ethics presented in Singer's book Animal Liberation failed to see the "radicalism of the ethical vision that powers your view on animals, an ethical vision that finds greater value in a healthy pig than in a profoundly retarded child, that commands inflicting a lesser pain on a human being to avert a greater pain to a dog, and that, provided only that a chimpanzee has 1 percent of the mental ability of a normal human being, would require the sacrifice of the human being to save 101 chimpanzees."^[4] For other uses, see Animal testing (disambiguation). ... For other persons named Peter Singer, see Peter Singer (disambiguation). ... Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals is a book by Australian philosopher Peter Singer. ...

Torture

When reviewing Alan Dershowitz's book, "Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge", Posner wrote in The New Republic, September 2002 that "If torture is the only means of obtaining the information necessary to prevent the detonation of a nuclear bomb in Times Square, torture should be used—and will be used—to obtain the information. ... no one who doubts that this is the case should be in a position of responsibility."^[5][6] Alan Morton Dershowitz (born September 1, 1938) is an American political figure and criminal law professor at Harvard Law School known for his extensive published works, career as an attorney in several high-profile law cases, and commentary on the Arab-Israeli conflict. ... For other uses, see New Republic. ... The ticking time bomb scenario is a thought experiment that has been used in the ethics debate over whether torture can ever be justified. ...

Major publications

The following is a selection of Posner's writings.

Selected Books

• 2007. Economic Analysis of Law, 7th ed., ISBN 978-0-735-56354-4
• 2007. The Little Book of Plagiarism, ISBN 978-0-375-42475-5
• 2006. Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency, ISBN 978-0-19-530427-5
• 2006. Uncertain Shield: The U.S. Intelligence System in the Throes of Reform, ISBN 978-0-742-55127-5
• 2005. Preventing Surprise Attacks: Intelligence Reform in the Wake of 9/11, ISBN 978-0-742-54947-0
• 2004. Catastrophe: Risk and Response, ISBN 978-0-19-530647-7
• 2003. Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline, ISBN 978-0-674-00633-1
• 2003. Law, Pragmatism and Democracy, ISBN 978-0-674-01081-9
• 2001. Breaking the Deadlock: The 2000 Presidential Election and the Courts, ISBN 978-0-691-09073-3
• 2001. Antitrust Law, 2nd ed., ISBN 978-0-226-67576-3
• 2001. Frontiers of Legal Theory, ISBN 978-0-674-01360-5
• 1999. The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory, ISBN 978-0-674-00799-4
• 1998. Law and Literature (revised and enlarged ed.), ISBN 978-0-674-51471-3
• 1996. Law and Legal Theory in England and America, ISBN 978-0-19-826471-2
• 1996. The Federal Courts: Challenge and Reform (2d ed.), ISBN 978-0-674-29627-5
• 1995. Aging and Old Age, ISBN 978-0-226-67568-8
• 1995. Overcoming Law, ISBN 978-0-674-64926-2
• 1992. Sex and Reason, ISBN 978-0-674-80280-3
• 1990. Cardozo: A Study in Reputation, ISBN 978-0-226-67556-5
• 1990. The Problems of Jurisprudence, ISBN 978-0-674-70876-1
• 1988. Law and Literature: A Misunderstood Relation, ISBN 978-0-674-51468-3
• 1981. The Economics of Justice, ISBN 978-0-674-23526-7

Law and literature is an interdisciplinary study of law and literature. ...

Articles

• Foreword: A Political Court (The Supreme Court, 2004 Term), 119 Harv. L. Rev. 31 (2005)
• "Transaction Costs and Antitrust Concerns in the Licensing of Intellectual Property", 4 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 325 (2005)
• Pragmatism Versus Purposivism in First Amendment Analysis, 54 Stan. L. Rev. 737 (2002)
• The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory, 111 Harv. L. Rev. 1637 (1998)
• Statutory Interpretation - In the Classroom and in the Courtroom, 50 U. Chi. L. Rev. 800 (1983)
• The Economics of the Baby Shortage 7 J. Legal Stud. 323 (with Elisabeth M. Landes) (1978)

Notes

1. ^ Who Are the Top 20 Legal Thinkers in America?. Legal Affairs. Retrieved on 2007-05-01.
2. ^ Boynton, Robert S. Boynton. "'Sounding Off,' a review of Richard Posner's Public Intellectuals", The Washington Post Book World, January 20, 2002.
3. ^ Richard Posner, The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory, 111 HARV. L. REV. 1637, 1642-46 (1998) (clarifying his moral positions)
4. ^ ^{a b} Posner-Singer debate at Slate
5. ^ Michael Slackman What's Wrong With Torturing a Qaeda Higher-Up?, New York Times 16 May 2004
6. ^ Philip Hensher Hollywood is helping us learn to love torture, The Independent, 26 June 2007

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External links

• Larissa MacFarquhar, "The Bench Burner", The New Yorker, Dec. 10, 2001, pg. 78
• Complete-Review.com's entry on Richard A. Posner
• Complete-Review.com's "Reactions to Richard Posner's Public Intellectuals"
• The Becker-Posner Blog
• Posner's biography
• Posner's Site
• Project Posner
• Lawrence A. Cunningham, Cardozo and Posner: A Study in Contracts, 36 William & Mary Law Review 1379 (1995)
• Richard Posner discusses his book, Public Intellectuals, at the Carnegie Council
• Soziale Innovation, Eine Serie in brand eins Folge 8: Wohlstandsmaximierung Article in the German economy magazine brand eins 8/2006
• Boldtype.com interview with Richard Posner on his new book, Little Book of Plagiarism
• "Posner, the Propagandist" by David Martin, September 8, 1999.
• "Secret trials for terrorists, says US judge", The Australian, June 29, 2007.