Richard Posner

Following his graduation from Harvard Law School, Judge Posner clerked for Justice William J. Brennan Jr. From 1963-65, he was assistant to Commissioner Philip Elman of the Federal Trade Commission. For the next two years he was assistant to the solicitor general of the United States. Prior to going to Stanford Law School in 1968 as associate professor, Judge Posner served as general counsel of the President's Task Force on Communications Policy. He first came to the Law School in 1969, and was Lee and Brena Freeman Professor of Law prior to his appointment in 1981 as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He was the chief judge of the court from 1993 to 2000.

Judge Posner has written a number of books, including Economic Analysis of Law (6th ed., 2003), The Economics of Justice (1981), Law and Literature (2d ed. 1997), The Problems of Jurisprudence (1990), Cardozo: A Study in Reputation (1990), The Essential Holmes (1992), Sex and Reason (1992), Overcoming Law (1995), The Federal Courts: Challenge and Reform (1996), Law and Legal Theory in England and America (1996), The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory (1999), Antitrust Law (2d ed. 2001), Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy (2003), Catastrophe: Risk and Response (2004), Preventing Surprise Attacks: Intelligence Reform in the Wake of 9/11 (2005), as well as books on the Clinton impeachment and Bush v. Gore, and many articles in legal and economic journals and book reviews in the popular press. He has received a number of awards, including the Learned Hand Medal for Exellence in Federal Jurisprudence from the Federal bar Council in 2005, and, also in 2005, the Thomas C. Schelling Award from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.