Richard Posner, prominent US appeals court judge and legal scholar, dies at 87

Richard Posner, a former US Circuit Judge on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and a pioneering legal scholar in law and economics, died at 87. He served 36 years, authored over 3,000 opinions and 50 books, and was known for his pragmatism and criticism of originalism.

Richard Posner, a former US Circuit Judge on the Chicago-based 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals and one of the most cited legal scholars of the last century, died at 87. He died on Tuesday, according to the University of Chicago Law School, where he taught for decades. Posner served on the appeals court for 36 years until retiring in 2017, appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1981. He authored more than 3,000 judicial opinions and over 50 books, including the seminal 1973 work "Economic Analysis of Law," which helped define the law and economics discipline. Posner called himself a pragmatist, focusing on real-world impact over precedent. Though long viewed as a conservative, he became a sharp critic of originalism, calling it a "magnificent disguise" in a 1990 article. He criticized Justice Antonin Scalia's methodology as displaying "remarkable elasticity," to which Scalia responded, "To say that I used legislative history is simply, to put it bluntly, a lie." In later years, Posner delivered rulings on abortion and LGBTQ rights hailed by liberals, and in 2014 described arguments defending same-sex marriage bans as "totally implausible." He retired abruptly in 2017 due to conflicts with colleagues over treatment of self-represented litigants. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease about six months after leaving the bench. He is survived by his wife Charlene Horn and their two sons, Kenneth and Eric.