Richard Allen Posner (/ˈpoʊznər/; born January 11, 1939) is an American legal scholar who served as a federal appellate judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from 1981 to 2017.[1] A senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, Posner was identified by The Journal of Legal Studies as the most-cited legal scholar of the 20th century.[2] As of 2021, he is also the mos