Richard Posner, Leader of a Legal Revolution

Posted by Bloomberg

Richard Posner, Leader of a Legal Revolution

By Cass Sunstein

Judge Richard Posner, probably the world’s most influential legal thinker over the last half-century, retired from the federal bench on Saturday. If a Nobel Prize were to be given in law, he would be the first to receive it, solely on the basis of his academic contributions.

Apart from that, he wrote more than 3,300 opinions as a federal judge. In countless areas, involving questions that grab headlines (like same-sex marriage) or highly technical matters, his analysis has proved enduring and defining.

Whole books have been written about Judge Posner, and we’ll see a lot more of them. In my view, his greatest contribution has been to spearhead a genuine revolution in both theory and practice: the economic analysis of law.

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