The Law School recently celebrated the establishment of the Richard A. Posner Professorship of Law in the Wallman Society of Fellows and the installation of Thomas J. Miles as its inaugural occupant. Miles was also simultaneously named a Distinguished Service Professor for his exceptional decade of service as dean of the Law School. 

The event, which included remarks from several speakers and an endowed chair lecture from Miles, honored Posner, one of the most influential figures in American law, who was a longtime Law School faculty member and an appellate judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit for nearly four decades.

In his opening remarks, Dean Adam Chilton expressed his gratitude to the many donors who made the endowed chair possible, giving special mention to UChicago alumni Imran Siddiqui, Sorin Siddiqui, ’01, Amy Wallman, and Richard Wallman “for their incredible leadership and vision in helping to establish this chair.”

Chilton also emphasized Posner’s reverberating influence both in the law and in the Law School’s curriculum and culture. And praised Miles for his importance as a scholar in the law and economics movement.

Miles, who previously held the Clifton R. Musser Professorship, joined the Law School in 2004. Recognized for his expertise in criminal justice and judicial behavior, he made creative use of the methods of law and economics to investigate legal questions not conventionally thought to fall within that field. As dean from 2015 to 2025, Miles’s leadership was marked by an unshakable commitment to the values of UChicago. He championed academic freedom, respectful dialogue, and free expression and focused on elevating the Law School’s core strengths—all against the backdrop of external crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“Tom does not just follow in [Posner’s] footsteps, he’s carved out his own unique approach to legal scholarship,” said Siddiqui at the event, the CEO of Talcott Financial Group and a longtime friend of Miles. “And perhaps more importantly, he’s provided an immeasurable service to this amazing university with his exemplary leadership. It’s only fitting that Tom is the inaugural recipient of this honor.”

Reflections on Posner’s Profound Impact

Before Miles stepped up to the lectern, a few speakers—colleagues and friends who have worked closely with Posner—shared reflections on the judge’s enduring impact on the law and legal education.

Judge Frank Easterbrook, ’73, who served on the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit with Posner for 32 years, spoke about their time together on the bench, recalling their frequent spirited debates. Easterbrook said that although he and Posner often disagreed more than any other pair of judges on the circuit, he never stopped admiring him, calling Posner “the leading intellectual light of the federal judiciary.”  

Former Law School dean Daniel Fischel, ’77, once a student of Posner, credited the judge not just with pioneering law and economics, but also with fundamentally changing legal education. “No reputable law school can now offer a curriculum without courses in law and economics—because of Dick,” he observed.

Ashley Keller, JD/MBA ’07, a former Posner law clerk, described working with Posner as an intellectually formative experience. He reflected on the judge’s love for sparring with ideas, his kindness and tact, and his humility. 

In video remarks played at the event, Professor Emeritus William M. Landes, Posner’s prolific co-author and close friend for nearly half a century, reflected on their scholarly partnership—and the truly joint nature of their work together. In a second video, Martha C. Nussbaum, the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, described Posner’s founding role in the law and literature movement. “Posner’s love of literature really influenced his judging, not only because he wrote beautifully … also with a biting wit and sarcasm … [but he also had] the capacity to see a human situation from all different sides,” Nussbaum said.

An Endowed Chair Lecture on Recent Trends in Legal Scholarship

The program culminated in a lecture from Miles, who accepted the challenge—and “tremendous, unimaginable honor”—of holding the Posner professorship. He chose his topic, an empirical analysis of certain aspects of legal research, in light of the tremendous scholarly influence of his chair’s namesake. “Even here I follow in [Posner’s] footsteps because he’s written a sizeable literature himself on the evolution of legal scholarship,” he quipped.

In his lecture, Miles explored how legal scholarship and its production have changed in recent years. Traditionally, legal scholarship has been a solo endeavor, but recent trends have reflected a rise in collaborative, empirical work in law and economics and a rise of co-authorships in legal scholarship more broadly, he noted.

A few possible explanations for this pattern of increased collaboration, which emerged in the 1990s, include the impact of computing and the internet, the maturity of intellectual fields—"It’s harder to make a contribution, so more inputs are required to make one”—and the rise of intellectual innovation in empirical analysis, he said.

Miles turned to the Law School’s Journal of Legal Studies (founded by Posner) to highlight some of the changes. “There’s a tight relationship between co-authorship and technical work and a fairly dramatic shift in the content of the journal in a more technical direction,” Miles observed, sharing a graph of publication data over the last 30 years.

“Articles are longer, feature more references, and receive more citations, especially technical and co-authored pieces,” he said. He further added that within law review articles, co-authored pieces appear to have more influence than solo-authored ones, irrespective of the methodology being used.

“This change in scholarly production raises questions about how it compares to other changes within the legal system,” Miles said. “If we were to do a similar analysis of, for example, appellate decisions or the number of citations in appellate decisions, my intuition is that the trends would look quite similar to what is happening in legal scholarship.”

Looking to the future, Miles predicted that artificial intelligence and other technological advances would only raise the competition and therefore the standard of scholarship—and foster more teamwork. He emphasized the importance of academic communities that encourage free expression, rigorous debate, and collaborative research—as UChicago does—to inspire faculty to do the most pathbreaking work. 

“Honoring great scholars who have changed entire paradigms, as we do today with the Richard Posner professorship, reaffirms the power of ideas and inspires current and future faculty to strive for scholarly excellence,” Miles concluded.