Richard Posner, the longtime federal appeals judge and University of Chicago legal scholar whose writing helped define the field of law and economics, has died at 87, CBS Chicago reported, citing the law school where he served as a senior lecturer.
The University of Chicago Law School said Posner died Tuesday. One of his sons, Eric Posner, is a professor there. Over nearly 40 years on the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Posner was known as an acerbic, witty writer and a tough questioner. President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, appointed him in 1981, but his opinions ranged from conservative to liberal, and he described his approach as pragmatic. He was a leading figure in using economic theory to analyze legal rules. His 1973 textbook, Economic Analysis of Law, was foundational and remains in print, CBS reported. He also wrote thousands of judicial opinions, hundreds of academic articles and dozens of books.
In a 2014 opinion striking down same-sex marriage bans in Wisconsin and Indiana, he rejected appeals to tradition, listing "cannibalism, foot-binding, and suttee" as historically "bad traditions," and mocked the states' argument that opposite-sex couples need marriage as an inducement for the sake of children: "Heterosexuals get drunk and pregnant, producing unwanted children; their reward is to be allowed to marry. Homosexual couples do not produce unwanted children; their reward is to be denied the right to marry. Go figure." In a 2017 ruling, he found that the 1964 Civil Rights Act also barred discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers. "I don't see why firing a lesbian because she is in the subset of women who are lesbian should be thought any less a form of sex discrimination than firing a woman because she's a woman," he wrote.
Outside court, he did not spare American institutions. In 2016, he called the Supreme Court "highly politicized," saying that "probably only" a couple of the justices were qualified, "and even they were not great," CBS reported. Dean Adam Chilton said Posner was uniquely "prolific, influential, and endlessly curious" and "a giant whose influence on our legal system, the field of law and economics, and on our law school cannot be overstated." The CBS account did not list a cause of death or funeral arrangements.