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Praising Richard A. Posner
Richard Posner was born in New York City in 1939. He graduated from Yale College, graduated from Harvard Law School three years later as President of the Harvard Law Review (and was evidently first in his class), passed the New York bar exam, and immediately became a clerk for Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. From there, he went on to positions at the Federal Trade Commission, the Office of the Solicitor General, and the President’s Task Force on Communications Policy. When he was only 29, he became a professor at Stanford Law School, and then went to teach at the law school at the University of Chicago. In 1981, he became a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, where he is now Chief Judge. He has published many books and articles, and also holds a number of honorary degrees.
As a general introduction to what others say about Posner, I offer the following reviewers’ comments regarding his 1995 book, Overcoming Law, which made it onto the list of the New York Times Book Review’s Editor’s Choice Best Books of 1995:
Posner is the real thing: a philosopher and intellectual who despite his immense learning has retained a strong sense of the humane and the decent. If that is pragmatism, then we need more of it.
--Paul Reidinger, ABA Journal
Richard Posner is the most prolific and creative judge now sitting on the federal bench. These essays in Overcoming Law, like everything he writes, are exhilarating in their range and wit and candor.
--Jeffrey Rosen, Yale Law Journal
Posner is a towering figure in American law, both as a judge and as a scholar, and one of his greatest merits has been his capacity for intellectual growth.
--Daniel Farber, University of Minnesota Law School
In this book, I provide an interpretation of Posner’s 1990 book, The Problems of Jurisprudence, whose topics and organization seemed most useful for my purposes. Here are a few reviewers’ comments about Problems of Jurisprudence. You can find these comments, like those above, at the Harvard Press Website (
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/Also.by/ Also.Posner.html):Richard Posner is one of the nation's most influential thinkers .... He spearheaded the law and economics movement that has, in the eyes of many, revolutionized the entire legal enterprise .... The bulk of his book consists of close analyses ... and crucial discussions ... all of which are bolstered by an impressive array of references to the rich literature of contemporary law, philosophy, science and jurisprudence.
--Calvin Woodward, New York Times Book Review
[Posner's] book will challenge everyone. All sides will likely draw upon the work, even as they differ with it and among themselves .... [It is an] extraordinarily wide-ranging, intellectually stimulating book.
--Robert A. Katzmann, Christian Science Monitor
As one reads through this remarkable book, Posner's vision of law slowly builds to a climax that ... is awesome .... [He] tackles all the basic problems of legal thought and of moral and political philosophy since the time of Plato and Aristotle [and] enables us to see the richly textured fabric of our legal system in a more coherent manner than has anyone else.
--Stephen B. Presser, Chicago Tribune
For further information about Richard Posner, see
http://moderndemocracy.com/posner.html and http://www.law.uchicago.edu/Posner/.
