Richard Posner, eminent federal appellate judge and pioneering scholar, dies at 87

Tess Kenny, Chicago Tribune on Nov 11, 2026

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

CHICAGO — Richard A. Posner, known for his storied career as a federal appellate judge and pioneering work in the field of law and economics, died Tuesday. He was 87.

The University of Chicago Law School, where Posner spent much of his tenure, announced the eminent scholar’s death in a news release Wednesday.

“There has never been a legal scholar quite as prolific, influential, and endlessly curious as Dick Posner,” U. of C. Law School Dean Adam Chilton said in a statement. “(He) was a giant whose influence on our legal system, the field of law and economics, and on our law school cannot be overstated.”

Born in New York, Posner grew up with a left-wing mother who had many radical friends, including a couple who adopted the children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the executed Russian spies, according to a Tribune Magazine profile in 2000.

Posner earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Yale University in 1959 and went on to graduate from Harvard Law School in 1962. He later clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. and in 1965 became the assistant to Thurgood Marshall, the future Supreme Court justice who was then the U.S. solicitor general.

He was appointed to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and served as its chief judge from 1993 to 2000.

Known as a conservative at the time of his appointment, Posner’s views skewed more libertarian through the years, and he often came down in favor of more liberal issues such as gay marriage and abortion rights.

Lawyers who regularly appeared before the 7th Circuit knew that when Posner was on a panel, they had to be ready for a line of questioning that could come out of left field. The salty judge was known to abruptly cut off lawyers whom he thought were off point, often with a dismissive “No, no, no!” delivered in his trademark nasal tone.

Posner’s biting and often brilliant written opinions, as well as his unrelenting questioning from the bench, made him an icon on the court.

When he retired in 2017, Posner, in a statement, said he had written more than 3,300 opinions in his time on the bench. At the time, he said he was “proud to have promoted a pragmatic approach to judging.” He said he spent his career applying his view that “judicial opinions should be easy to understand and that judges should focus on the right and wrong in every case.”

Posner also spent decades on the faculty at UChicago’s Law School. Joining the faculty in 1969, he was a leading scholar of law and economics, a field born and developed at the university beginning in the early 20th century, according to the school.

“I doubt there has been a week that’s gone by since I started teaching at the Law School where I haven’t talked about one of Dick’s ideas or opinions,” Chilton stated Thursday. “We will mourn his loss deeply, and on behalf of the entire Law School community, I extend our deepest condolences to his family.”

_____

(The Tribune’s Jason Meisner contributed.)

_____