People In Law: Judge Richard Posner

The next post in The Daily Ross series of People in Law is our first non-Willamette interview. In several of our casebooks we've read opinions from Judge Posner. I first came to know of Posner's work because of a law and economics class I took at UNR. We read his Economic Analysis of Law as the textbook.

Judge Posner is 68 years old and have been serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit since 1981 after being nominated by President Ronald Reagan. He graduated with an degree in English from Yale before attending Harvard Law School, where he gradated magna cum laude and was president of the Harvard Law Review. He taught law for a year at Standford then moved to the University of Chicago. He still teaches there. His largest contribution to the field of law has been an emphasis on law and economics. Judge Posner blogs at The Becker-Posner Blog. In addition to his opinions, journal articles, and blog, Judge Posner has published several books. I recently had the opportunity to ask Judge Posner some questions:

What do you believe to be your greatest legal achievement?

It would be bragging for me to talk about my "achievements." But I have played a role in bringing economics into law, and I have published almost 2500 judicial opinions, some of which I hope have improved the law.

What is the biggest mistake students of law make?

To get hung up on semantics--to think that if they know the language of a rule, they know the rule. You cannot understand a legal rule without understanding its purpose, and that requires digging below the semantic surface.

What is the biggest mistake professors of law make?

They don't teach students to look at cases from the standpoint of a judge--and the judge is interested in the purpose behind rules. The judge is not a mechanical applier of semantic formulas to facts.

What change in America's legal education process would lead to better lawyers, judges, etc?

I don't think law school should be required to be three years. If there were no such requirement--if law school were only required to be, say, one year--law schools would compete to make the second and third years interesting and relevant enough to induce students to pay the steep tuition.

What is the next great legal challenge our legal system is going to face?

Coping with the scientific complexity of modern life. Lawyers, judges, and law students tend to shun technical, quantitative methods.